


Strays

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Hooker AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-21
Updated: 2011-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:39:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder's a pimp, Crosby's a liar, Harden's a junkie, Zito's in love, and they're all hookers. Goddamn right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strays

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted January 2006.

Strays  
By Candle Beck

 

Mulder gave Zito a bottle of whiskey and the key to room fifteen, and told him that his name was Ryan tonight. Mulder smiled and winked and said, “I’ll be at Nicky’s till two or three, but I don’t want to see you before morning.” Mulder took thirty percent and the rest went to keeping Zito alive.

Zito got well and truly smashed and wedged the room door open with his shoe. He was stupid; he’d always been stupid. He was gonna get killed and robbed and then what would Richie do?

The trick was in his forties, wedding ring tan, receding hairline, necktie stuffed in his suit jacket. Zito gave him a big drunk smile and took off his shirt, ran his hands through his hair until it was messy and fell in his eyes like straw. Zito said, “I’m Ryan,” and the trick nodded, swallowing, looking nervous.

It was okay. Nervous was better than mean. Zito chanted in his mind, ‘ryan ryan i’m ryan,’ and ants sketched the wall, Los Angeles shone through the curtains all red and yellow. The trick didn’t know what he was doing, but Zito did, and it was okay. They both jumped when sirens went by outside.

The trick pushed folded money into Zito’s hand and Zito should have counted it, but he was passing out swiftly and the ceiling swam above him. The trick said, “thank you,” very quietly, and left. Zito curled up on the bed with the money between his knees, his jaw aching. The air tasted like pencil lead, and he fell asleep, got woken up by the motel’s manager, because Mulder had only paid for three hours.

Zito walked home, his head down, hands in his pockets. There was a rip in his coat and cool air shuffled in, coiling across his lower back. He was mostly sober, half-asleep. He had a headache and his shoes were falling apart.

Harden was passed out on the kitchen floor, his legs sticking out into the short hallway. Their place consisted of one medium-sized room and a small kitchen. Zito slept in the kitchen. Harden had fresh scratches on his arms and street grime on his face. His dirty sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as Zito hooked his hands in Harden’s armpits and dragged him into the main room, rolled him over onto his mattress.

Harden looked skinnier than he’d been twelve hours ago.

Zito pulled off Harden’s shoes and wiped his face with a red T-shirt. Harden muttered and turned away from Zito, biting the pillow. It had been his night off.

Zito put the money in the ice drawer of the freezer and it was too late to sleep, so he sat by the window and made sure that Harden kept breathing until the sun came up.

*

Mulder took them to a club, and Harden did lines off Mulder’s hand in the back of the cab, clinging to Mulder’s wrist. Zito held Harden’s lightning bolt necklace back with his hand so that it wouldn’t get in the way, drawing it tight across Harden’s Adam’s apple and feeling Harden swallow hard.

It was already past midnight. Harden jittered and grinned so nakedly it hurt to watch, and Mulder told them that all he wanted tonight was a hundred dollars from each of them, and then they were free. Zito met Harden’s eyes, skittery wide eyes, pupils like dimes, and Zito said to Mulder without looking at him, “I’ll have mine in an hour.”

Harden laughed through clenched teeth. “Have mine in thirty fuckin’ minutes, Mark.”

Mulder rolled his eyes, his hands cupped on the backs of their necks, Zito and Harden making faces at each other and taunting, “oh yeah? oh _yeah_?” Mulder thumbed open a few more buttons on Zito’s shirt, scraping his knuckles down the center of his chest, and Zito held Harden’s shoulders while Mulder carefully put glitter on Harden’s eyelids. Harden licked Mulder’s hand like there might still be some speed there.

“Meet me at the bar when you’re done, all right?”

Zito saluted and Harden giggled, curling his hand in the front of Zito’s shirt and pulling him off-balance. Mulder flicked Zito’s ear. “Don’t get caught, boys,” he said, and then headed into the club.

Harden kissed Zito, his eyes painted like stars, and whispered in his ear, “Game on.”

Harden got a head start, because Zito had to take a couple of shots before he could stand the volume of the music, and he caught flashes of Harden between the pretty boys, gleaming and dancing with his arms above his head. Mulder watched Zito watching Harden from the side of the bar, his mouth thin and tight.

Zito’s throat was on fire and Harden’s pulse was ringing like a bell. Harden liked angel-faced boys with no scars, which was lucky for Zito, because good-looking boys didn’t have to pay for it. Zito trolled the perimeter of the club, sharp and buzzing under his skin, looking for men with creased faces who didn’t belong there.

He found one and smiled shy, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. He waited until they were in the backroom and he had his hand down the guy’s pants before telling him it’d be a hundred to get blown, which was twice the usual price, but the guy was wearing expensive clothes and kneading Zito’s shoulders with desperation.

The guy’s eyes went big and betrayed, his hand clenching around Zito’s wrist. Zito held on, licked his neck, moved his thumb along the underside of the guy’s dick and said raggedly above the bass line, “c’mon baby don’t make me go back out there.”

The guy closed his eyes and breathed out, sinking back against the wall. Zito grinned and got down on his knees.

He saw Harden as he was leaving. Harden had someone half bent over, one hand on the boy’s shoulder and the other working his jeans open. Zito caught his gaze and Harden smiled cheerfully and waved at him. Zito flashed the money with a smirk and Harden's face warped into a scowl, jerking the boy hard back against him. Zito went to find Mulder.

Mulder bought him a drink and they talked about the weather, watching the boys dance. Zito’s eyes spun like kaleidoscopes, and Mulder twisted the ends of Zito’s hair around his fingers. Harden showed up and Zito shook Mulder off him, made fun of Harden and Harden said, “at least mine was cute.”

They toasted the night and then Mulder set them loose, and Zito followed Harden out onto the street as smooth as liquor, where the moon wheeled across the sky and the world was theirs.

*

Harden woke up clean for the first time in weeks, and Zito was at the window, watching the kids play baseball in the sandlot across the street. Harden stuck his head under the sink and blasted himself with cold water, thrumming into his ears and sliding down his bare back. He made himself some toast, his mouth sticky and sour, and filled up a bottle with water.

He checked the ice drawer and there was almost twelve hundred dollars in there, all of it theirs because Mulder had already taken his cut. Rent wasn’t due for two weeks, and there was nothing broken that needed to be fixed.

Harden joined Zito at the card table and said, “Hi.”

Zito smiled and pushed his half-full cup of coffee at Harden. Harden gave him his crusts.

“So I was out in Malibu last night,” Harden said, chipping paint off the windowsill. “I think I met somebody famous. I was on, like, a golf course.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I forget why, but we were there and I definitely recognized this guy.”

Zito chewed absently on a crust, his eyes trained on the sandlot. Harden could see the bruises on Zito’s shoulders through his thin T-shirt. Guys thought that because Zito was tall, he could take it rough.

“Who was it?” Zito asked.

Harden shrugged. His stomach felt small and uncomfortably tight. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, but he forced some of it down, his mind fixed on the half-gram in the toe of his sneaker, his after-breakfast treat. “I’m not sure. He had to be famous, though, he was, like, too good-looking not to be famous.”

Zito snorted. “Sure. Eat the rest of your toast.”

One of the kids across the street jacked the ball through a window, a high shattering noise bursting through the streets, and they scattered like a bomb had gone off. Harden put his feet on top of Zito’s under the table.

Zito had found him blacked out on the floor of a bus station bathroom ten months ago. Harden had regained consciousness with Zito’s arms around him, just as they were trying to haul him into the ambulance. Harden broke free and ran, his heart near to collapse and the walls of his mind as thin as tissue paper.

Zito had put his coat on Harden when Harden was passed out, because Harden wouldn’t stop shaking. Harden found thirty-three dollars and a strip of condoms in the pockets, a dead lighter and a blank business card with an address handwritten on the back. Later, when Harden was high and in the mood to be redeemed, he’d showed up at the address hoping he’d be able to return the coat to the tall guy who’d saved him, the guy whose face he’d never got a good look at but dreamed about sometimes.

He found Mulder instead. Mulder fucked him and then offered him a job. Harden was confused enough to say yes, and then Zito was there and Zito was all that Harden couldn’t remember, and Zito had the same job, and then it was okay.

Harden finished his toast and his body rebelled, sweat breaking out on the back of his neck and his palms crawling. He folded his arms on the table and put his head down, breathing carefully through his nose, vaguely aware of Zito’s hand smoothing across his hair, Zito’s thumb drawing a long straight line, high on his forehead.

*

Mulder didn’t have his name on a lease or anywhere official, lived on the other side of West Hollywood from Zito and Harden’s place. He was rich by rumor and action, but there was nothing written down to trace him back to this.

He had them over on a Tuesday night, dressed in black with his hair spiky and golden, his eyes kohl-shaded. They each killed a bottle of cheap red wine, Zito and Mulder eating macaroni and cheese for dinner, Harden a few forkfuls of plain pasta and then some crank.

Mulder had made good, he was the dream. The building was run-down and there were moths in the closets and hallways, but the place was his, and he had a working television set and a silver watch that Harden was always making plans to steal.

The boys were drunk and slumped against each other on the couch, Zito’s arm over Harden’s shoulders, Harden’s head resting on Zito’s chest. Mulder didn’t believe them when they said they weren’t fucking, but what could he do about it? He could see the artery jumping in Harden’s throat.

“There’s a party tonight,” Mulder told them, sitting in the beat armchair, green and yellow plaid pattern.

Zito rolled his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. Harden snickered for no apparent reason and pressed his face harder against Zito, his eyes screwed shut.

“Out in the Valley. Movie producer, something. He was asking for pretty boys and fuck if you two didn’t come to mind.”

“I’m not pretty,” Harden mumbled into Zito’s shirt. Zito rolled his eyes at Mulder.

Mulder smiled harshly. “Then your crank’s not good enough.”

“His crank is plenty good,” Zito said, his voice edged. He looked surprised for a second, sliding his arm down to cup Harden’s elbow. “Anyway.”

“Anyway. Thousand for each of you, but it’ll be a busy night.” Mulder made an obscene gesture with his hands. He watched as Zito leaned down and whispered something in Harden’s ear. Harden’s hands were starting to jig, twitching on Zito’s knee as he nodded.

Zito looked back up at him, and Mulder still had trouble reading him, Zito’s eyes the color of rum and Coke, the dark-blue tint of his hair, his fine mouth. Zito had never let Mulder fuck him.

“No filming. I broke my hand on that dude’s camera last time.”

Mulder nodded. “I remember.” He wasn’t sure why Zito cared; it wasn’t like Zito had anything left to lose. Mulder glanced at Harden, whose lips were moving silently, eyelids fluttering. “Give him another bump. He’s fading.”

Mulder drove them to the Valley, Zito and Harden messing around like kids in the backseat, playing the hand-slap game. Mulder was glad to be rid of them, leaving them on the sidewalk with their hands in each other’s pockets, squinting against the streetlight in something like pain.

He headed back to Hollywood, checked in on a few other of his boys, and then went to Figueroa and Carson, where Crosby was waiting on the corner in blue jeans and a gray hoodie, smiling hugely as Mulder pulled up and unlocked the doors.

*

They took a cab back from the Valley party at dawn, Harden shivering against the door with his knees pulled to his chest. Zito had tried to keep them in the same room, tried to keep his hand steady on Harden’s back, but he hadn’t been able to. The men at the party were not to be trusted, Zito could see that walking in the door, and Harden kept smiling sweetly at them, and Zito had to let him go.

He’d seen Harden with his nose bleeding, sometime between the fourth blowjob he’d given and the second time he got fucked, and Harden’s eyes were pure white, his face shiny with sweat. Harden was being passed from one man to another, his arms hanging loose and his head lolling. Zito wanted to call time-out and calm him down, but there was no chance of that.

Harden’s hand kept going to the lump of money in his front pocket. Zito stared out the window, the flat orange tinge of the morning settling on the strip malls and palm trees. Old people were already out walking, little dogs in knitted sweaters, bakery trucks stopped in the middle of the road with their hazard lights flashing. It was almost peaceful.

“Richie?”

Harden’s fingers tightened on the money. “Hmm?”

Zito swallowed. He needed a shower worse than he needed air. “I, I’ll take the money over to Mark’s, if you wanna get some sleep.”

Harden’s gaze traced the low city, the sun edging over the tops of the buildings. His cheeks were hollowed, the line of his jaw showing starkly. “Don’t think I’m gonna sleep, man.”

“You should,” Zito told him, scratching at the tear in his jeans. He was pretty sure Harden was out of speed, he’d seen the little plastic baggie with the skulls and crossbones empty on the coffee table as they were stumbling out into the light.

“Yeah.” Harden dug in his pocket and pulled out his half of the money, passing it to Zito without looking at him. “Steal Mark’s watch for me, will you?”

Zito half-smiled and reached out to touch him, but there was static electricity and it snapped into Zito’s fingers and against Harden’s face, and he jerked away, burned.

Harden got out at their place and Zito looked out the back window for him as the cab drove on, Harden shrinking and disappearing into the black hulk of their building. Zito didn’t expect Mulder to be awake this early, but he knocked just in case, and Mulder opened the door without a shirt on, the eyeshadow smudged with lines like fingernails scraped across his cheekbones.

Mulder didn’t say much to him, sitting down on the couch and counting out his cut from the money. Zito stayed standing because it hurt to sit. He asked Zito how the party had been and Zito shrugged.

Someone coughed from the bedroom and Zito let a ghost of a smirk drift on his face. “New boy, Mark?”

Mulder gave him an irritated grin. “Not yet.” He handed Zito the rest of the money back and rubbed his neck, looking exhausted.

“Didn’t realize you still fucked for fun,” Zito said, biting the insides of his cheeks. Mulder glared at him, the muscles in his arms pulled like slingshots, his chest tense.

“Don’t you have a fucking junkie to wet-nurse?” Mulder said quietly.

Zito would have hit him if he wasn’t so worn out. He wanted to light things on fire, smash the TV, tell the boy in Mulder’s bed to get out while he still could. Mulder’s eyes flickered, and he sighed.

“It’s been a long night,” Mulder told him. “Go get some rest.”

Zito ran a hand through his hair and even that hurt. Everything hurt. He nodded and went to the door, asking for no particular reason before he left, “What’s his name?”

Mulder looked at him suspiciously before answering, “Bobby,” with his voice careful around the name like it might break if he treated it bad.

Zito said, “I’ll see you tonight, man,” and left. By the time he got home, Harden was already gone.

*

Harden spent the day at the beach. It was hot and bright and made him feel like his skin was shredding off slowly from the inside. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep until nightfall. He couldn’t stay home with Zito, because Zito would stay quiet and watch him sadly and Harden would want to curl up around him and keep him awake too.

He lay in the sun, sweating out the poison. He’d gotten there early enough to be alone, white birds like thrown napkins, the surface of the sand turning to glass.

It was hard, coming down. He wanted to turn his watch ahead nine hours and pretend he was already over it, but he’d sold his watch last week in between tricks.

Zito took care of him, but Zito couldn’t do anything about this.

Harden only moved to drink his water and fill up the bottle again. The beach began to fill, get colorful and loud. Harden wasn’t sure what day it was, it was still summer and the high school kids told him nothing.

He stayed on the beach all day, his jeans forming to his body, sand rasping into his T-shirt. He did what he could not to think about anything, drifting in strange patterns. His lightning bolt necklace warmed and seared into his skin, and the sun was just below the line of the pier when somebody’s black and white dog came nosing into his side.

Harden was yanked from a terrible waking dream and a high voice was calling the dog off, calling, “Leave him alone, Ed!” The dog barked and licked Harden’s shirt. Harden lifted a hand in bemusement, tugging at the dog’s ears, narrowing his eyes against the dying light.

A silhouette arrived above him and pulled the dog off by the collar. “Sorry,” the silhouette said. “He, uh, he likes shiny things.”

Harden pushed up on an elbow and the sun shifted behind the silhouette and Harden could see his face then, and he thought clearly, ‘oh i get it, it’s the prettiest boy in the whole wide world.’

He smiled without thought, his teeth slick and gritty, and said, “No problem.”

The prettiest boy in the world smiled back at him, clean-white, his cargo shorts splattered with paint, his T-shirt looking brand-new and still unused to his body. Harden cruised him as casually as possible, licking his lips. The boy looked surprised, then kind of scared. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old.

“That’s a neat necklace,” the boy said, pointing with the hand that held Ed’s leash, his voice slightly accented, the South, maybe, Texas. Harden could never tell the difference. Ed strained and panted, grinning at Harden.

Harden touched the lightning bolt, absently hoping that he didn’t look as strung-out as he felt. “Thanks. That’s a. A neat dog.”

The boy laughed, palming his dog’s head. “He’s schizophrenic. Attracted to anything even a little bit pretty.”

Harden made his grin go keen, the skin of his face pulling back. “So’m I.”

The boy blinked at him, his mouth dropped open slightly. Harden ran his eyes over the boy’s arms and legs, the gild of the sunset around him. He could breathe, all at once, like his lungs were out of hock at last.

The boy smiled nervously and said, “Well, um. See ya.” He tugged Ed away, the dog whining, and moved slowly down the beach. Harden watched him go, thinking about maybe following, taking him to get a Coke or a sandwich, fucking him under the pier with the dog tied up and playing in the surf, but he decided not to bother.

The prettiest boy in the world looked back a few times, his face closed up and fretful, and Harden laughed. Harden picked himself up and took off his shirt, diving into the ocean still wearing his jeans, ducking under again and again, broke up into the clear pink light, his hands sliding down the back of his head.

*

Thursday was a Danny night. Zito went to the Glass Slipper Inn without thinking about where Harden was or what sort of trouble he was getting into. It was warm enough that Zito didn’t need a coat, but he wore one anyway, so that he would have a place to put his hands.

Haren was already in the room, his USC baseball cap slung over the bedpost, rolling a joint on the bed. He smiled when Zito came in, licking the paper and folding it over, a small piece of green between his teeth. Zito went over and put his hand on Haren’s forehead, told him, “hold still,” and picked the piece of green out, flicking it away. He kissed Haren, tasting beer and Big Red gum, and then took a shower. The Glass Slipper had excellent water pressure.

Haren was his favorite regular. He was twenty years old, a student, rich and good-looking enough not to have to bother with a guy like Zito, but Haren was also master of the double life.

When Haren was fourteen, his father had caught him jerking off a neighborhood boy and beat him so badly Haren lost eighty percent of the hearing in his right ear. Haren was as straight as a pencil after that, except for the fact that he really wasn’t at all.

His plan, he’d explained to Zito, was to wait until after he graduated, move across the country, and then be as gay as was physically possible. In the meantime, his parents could pay for his college education and the allowance that let Haren afford three hundred dollars a week for the company of a male hustler—nothing more than what Haren was owed for the fact that music would never sound right to him again.

He played baseball year-round for a club team, and belonged to a fraternity. He was taking summer classes so that he could graduate early. He almost always brought weed with him when they met at the Glass Slipper. Zito liked him for a number of reasons, but mostly because Haren viewed him as training ground, practice for being as gay as was physically possible. Zito hadn’t been sucked off so often since he went to work for Mulder. Haren was getting pretty fucking good at it, too.

Zito came out wearing a towel and sat down on the bed beside Haren. Haren popped him companionably in the shoulder, swiping his fingers at the water on Zito’s chest.

“How you been?” Zito asked him.

Haren grinned. “Gay,” he answered, same as he always did, and Zito half-smiled, leaning his head back against the headboard.

“You look rough, man,” Haren told him after a minute, creeping his hand sneakily onto Zito’s forearm, playing the veins of his wrist like a guitar.

“Yeah,” Zito sighed. He didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t anything new. “How’s school?”

“I failed a soc exam,” Haren said happily, his finger pattering on Zito’s arm. “One of the guys at the house broke his ankle skateboarding on the roof. I think my history TA is hitting on me.”

Zito hmm’ed and turned over onto his side, putting his hand on Haren’s stomach, which jumped through his shirt. “Go for it, dude. Easy A.”

Haren laughed. “She’s a chick. I’m already not sleeping with my girlfriend.” Zito pushed his shirt up and bent his head, mouthing Haren’s stomach. Haren breathed out cautiously, whispered, “whoa.” He always sounded so surprised, heating up quickly under Zito’s hands, getting hard in the crook of Zito’s elbow.

Zito got Haren to sit up, stripped his shirt off him, and cupped him through his jeans. “Did you bring the money?”

Haren slid down on the bed, his head clonking the headboard. He bit his lip and nodded. Zito pulled Haren’s wallet out of his back pocket and knelt, straddling Haren’s leg. He counted out the three hundred, Haren watching him through half-closed eyes. Zito put the money on the bedside table next to the neat-rolled jay, and settled on top of him, kissing Haren’s throat and undoing his jeans.

“What do you want?” Zito asked, speaking softly into Haren’s good ear. Haren twisted under him and drew the towel off, his eyes shuttering through the possibilities. He pulled Zito’s head close and asked Zito to fuck him. Zito could forget about everything, times like this.

The small of Haren’s back was the exact size of Zito’s hand. Someday, he’d told Zito, when he was allowed to be what he was, Haren was going to get a tattoo there, just over the curve of his ass, and it was going to read in dark blue ink, ‘faster. harder. deeper.’

It was kind of terrible that Zito would never get a chance to see that.

*

Mulder was drunk and for some reason Crosby was still in his house. Crosby slept roughly the same amount as a cat. As soon as he woke up, Mulder was gonna kick him out.

Mulder changed into something without sleeves, idly planning on going to a club. He considered shaving, but he didn’t trust his hands. It was still early, too early to go out, too late to stop drinking. He sat down on the edge of the bed, where Crosby was strewn out like starfish, and tried to make sense of his pocket calendar, figuring out which of his boys should be bringing in money tonight. Most of them were on the streets right now, in cheap motels and backrooms.

Crosby muttered in his sleep. He had nightmares, which annoyed Mulder a little bit. Crosby claimed to have had a hard life, but he didn’t have track marks or scars on his face, and Mulder didn’t really believe it.

Mulder would put Crosby to work, eventually. Another week or so, until Crosby got used to Mulder coming around and Mulder learned a little more about him, discovered something he could hold against Crosby.

Crosby had tried to lift Mulder’s wallet, almost three weeks ago now, at a party somewhere in Van Nuys. Mulder had only been playing dead, catching his breath on the deck, lights like Christmas tree ornaments spiraling in his mind. Crosby had gotten his hand halfway into Mulder’s pocket and Mulder sprung, pinning him to the wood and gently placing a knife against his throat.

He might have killed him, too, had Crosby done something other than smile, silver-blue eyes glinting like money given breath. Mulder took him home instead.

“Hey?” Crosby’s foot poked at his back. Mulder turned and Crosby was yawning, rubbing his chest. “You leaving?”

As if Mulder would ever leave Crosby alone in his place. He nodded, calculating swiftly how much he could charge for Crosby, for those arms and the flat cut of his stomach.

“’Kay,” Crosby said. He looked vaguely haunted, the way he always did when he just woke up. There were many things that he wasn’t telling Mulder, everything. Crosby didn’t know how to do anything but lie. Mulder could change that, though.

“What time is it?”

Mulder checked his watch. “Ten.” He considered that he had no idea where Crosby lived, or what he did for a living besides being a lousy pickpocket. He put his hand on Crosby’s leg, and Crosby gave him a sleepy grin, folding his arms behind his head. Crosby was always up for it. He was gonna be fantastic at this job.

“I’ll drop you off wherever you want on my way out,” Mulder said, his hand scaling Crosby’s leg.

Crosby looked at him, a sly skinned expression on his face. “I wanna go to Paris,” he said, and for a moment, stupid-drunk, Mulder thought about saying, yeah, okay.

*

Zito got home to find Harden sitting on the steps of their building, pressing his hands together and staring at the trash rolling in the gutter. Zito’s breath caught, and he slowed his pace, giving Harden plenty of time to see him coming.

Harden tipped his head to the side and his mouth bent up. “Hi,” he said.

Zito echoed it, and added hesitantly, “How are you?”

Harden half-shrugged, his lower lip chapped and almost bleeding. “Clean.”

Studying him, Zito stayed quiet, crossing his fingers in his pockets. Harden smirked, and moved his hand in an X over his heart. “Swear.”

Zito exhaled. He could see the blue of Harden’s eyes again, his pupils shrank down to periods. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, wanting to push the cobwebs off Harden’s shoulder, rattle the sand from his hair.

“Saving up my energy for the stairs,” Harden replied, and it must be true, the way he was keeping himself perfectly still, each breath measured. Zito offered him his hand, pulled him to his feet.

It was four flights straight up. They started slow. Harden asked, already unsteady, “Where were you?”

“Saw Danny.”

Harden smiled, a bit cold. “How. How is the c-college boy?”

Zito tightened his arm around Harden’s waist, bearing most of his weight and beginning to feel it in his legs and back. “Same. Failing half his classes. His team, like, won some game or something.” Zito paused, then said, keeping his voice carefully neutral, “Maybe you shouldn’t try and talk.”

“I’m fine,” Harden said sharply, and started coughing. They had to stop, Harden slumped over the rail, leaning heavily on Zito and his whole body shaking. Zito saw the sweat rising on Harden’s forehead, and angled so that Harden’s face was against his shoulder, feeling the heat and slick of it through his shirt.

“When did you last sleep, Richie?” he asked, hating the jerk of Harden’s chest, the way he gasped for air.

Harden shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “What’s today?”

“Thursday.”

Harden pushed himself up off the rail, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “Four days. Five? I can’t remember.”

Zito took Harden’s hands in his own and checked to make sure he wasn’t coughing blood. But Harden’s palms were pale and clear. “Okay.”

They made it the rest of the way up, but only barely. Harden wouldn’t let them stop again. Zito was pretty much carrying him by the time they got inside, kicking the door shut, hauling Harden into the main room and laying him down on his mattress. Harden shivered and curled into a ball. Zito sat next to him and opened his hand on Harden’s head, tucking his thumb into the dent of Harden’s temple.

“How was coming down?” Zito asked softly. Harden’s chest jackrabbited. He sighed.

“Actually. Not that bad. Saw the sun set on the beach. I met this. I met a dog.”

Zito raised his eyebrows. “A dog?”

“His name was Ed.” Harden smiled, his face settling until he looked at peace. Zito didn’t know what to say, rubbing his fingers through Harden’s hair, the sand sneaking under his nails.

“We’re rich, you know,” Zito said eventually, feeling the fold of Danny’s money in his pocket. “We could buy back the TV.”

“Fuck the TV,” Harden said, sinking away as Zito watched, tiny weights attached by thread to his eyelids. “Rots the brain.”

Zito snorted a laugh. His hand on Harden’s face started to tremble. He wanted to ask, how long will you last this time? But Harden could never say for sure. He touched Harden’s nose, his mouth. He lay down beside him and whispered, “I’m just gonna hang out here for a minute.”

Harden murmured and burrowed into Zito, his hot face against Zito’s chest, both of them still wearing their shoes.

*

Mulder came by sometime during Harden’s nineteenth hour of unconsciousness. Zito stepped into the hallway to talk to him, his hair wrecked by the bed, flat on one side and stabbing out on the other. Zito paid him for Danny and Mulder made the money disappear.

“Your boy skipped out on both of his regulars,” Mulder said, glaring at Zito. “That’s two hundred dollars he lost me.”

Zito pulled a hand across his face and let out a long breath. “He’ll make it up.”

“I don’t take IOUs,” Mulder snapped. “If he’s more interested in speed than paying his fucking rent-”

“He’s not,” Zito cut him off. “He just got clean.”

“For what?” Mulder scoffed. “A day? Week if we’re lucky?”

“Look, what do you want me to say? He’s clean, he’ll be clean for however long and then he won’t be. You act like this is fucking new.”

Mulder didn’t like the sneer on Zito’s face, briefly imagined hooking his thumbs into Zito’s eyes and gouging until he hit bone, and said quickly, “There’s a fine line, all right? It keeps him up, keeps his dick hard, keeps him on the street, great, fantastic. He’s cuter when he’s tweaked, anyway. But nobody’s seen him since the party in the Valley.”

Zito stared at the floor. “I’ve seen him.”

“You don’t fucking _count_ ,” Mulder half-shouted. He stopped, not used to getting angry so fast. Zito was always doing that to him. Mulder tightened his jaw, narrowed his eyes. “Just, bring him to Nicky’s tonight and he can start paying me back, okay?”

Zito shook his head, gritting his teeth. “Not tonight. He’s got to sleep it off.”

“Goddamn it-” Mulder began, but Zito was digging into his pocket, tearing the rest of Danny’s money free, and shoved it into Mulder’s surprised hands.

“There. Two hundred. All right? Let him fucking sleep.”

Mulder stared at him for a second, and then his face twisted into a cruel smile. He pocketed the money. “Well, aren’t you sweet.”

Zito raised his eyes and he looked plainly murderous, his hands clenched in fists at his sides. “You got what you came for, Mark. Don’t play like him being out of the game for a couple of days is gonna break you.”

“Not as long as he’s got you to cover his ass,” Mulder said, and then fell silent, watching Zito glare at him, liking the strict planes of Zito’s face and his hard-carved mouth.

“Was there anything else?” Zito asked, soft enough to be dangerous. Mulder shrugged.

“Free advice. Think real hard about what you’re doing with him. How far down you’re willing to let him take you.”

It felt like a script, nothing real. Not the smallest hope that was Zito going to listen to him. Mulder had never found Harden to be all that fucking spectacular in bed, but apparently with Zito he was a god.

Zito showed him a big fake smile, the one usually reserved for particularly unattractive tricks. “Thanks for stopping by, boss.”

Zito went back inside, and Mulder left, wishing faintly in the stairwell that Zito had, at some point, let himself be filmed.

*

Harden woke up and it was dark outside. The alarm clock’s red neon twelve o’clock was blinking insistently at him, painting his face. Zito was gone, but there was a note taped to Harden’s chest, which was bare, though Harden didn’t remember ever taking off his shirt. Harden took the note over to the window and read it by the streetlight.

‘Gone to work. Eat something. It’s Saturday.’

Harden nodded to himself, the world set in his head again. He made some cereal and took a shower, his feet skidding on the tile and his arms pinwheeling for balance. He realized in astonishment that he actually felt normal right now. Like maybe he was late for class or a date or something.

The stairs were tricky, the muscles in his legs feeling atrophied, but he made it, and walked down the block until he could read the time from one of the bank buildings that loomed a neighborhood over. It was early, only nine o’clock. Harden thought about maybe making some money, idly scanning the street for somebody who looked likely, but he gave it up pretty quickly. It was kinda nice to just walk around, the breeze meeting his skin, a hollow buzzing lighting up his mind.

He had coffee at the diner and it hurt his mouth. He’d chewed through the inside of his cheeks, like always, and he sucked on ice cubes and wet paper napkins, spitting blood into an extra glass. The waitress glared at him, but he tipped like he owned the city, and she would forgive him.

He thought absently that in a day or two he’d be healthy again, his strength would return and it’d be so good going back to it then.

On the street, Harden got propositioned a few times from the alleys, saying back politely, “Sorry, I’m off the clock,” and sometimes they swore at him, sometimes they laughed. Somewhere way far off, a dog was barking.

He got lost, wandering out of West Hollywood and into a place where the air smelled better and fewer windows were broken. There were bicycles in the yards, rope ladders hanging from the trees.

Harden’s feet were aching and his blood was starting to curdle, reminding him in a low insistent voice that some speed would be pretty good right now, the jagged rip through his sinuses, the thin cloud in his lungs. The pop under his skin. He sighed, dark thoughts building in his mind. He’d barely been clean a day. Usually it didn’t happen so fast.

Then his feet were suddenly gone from underneath him, and he was flying, momentarily in the air, crashing on his back. His head snapped onto the sidewalk with a dull crack and stars burst in his eyes. The baseball he’d slipped on shot across the street, rolled into the gutter.

“Oh jeez, are you okay?”

Harden blinked and the prettiest boy in the world was there and he was certain that he’d been knocked unconscious. He smiled all messy and dazed, and his head hurt magnificently. The boy knelt over him, appeared to recognize him for a split second, his eyes widening, and then Harden’s vision filled in gray, casting his last thought to Zito, who was gonna flip the fuck out when he got home and Harden wasn’t there.

*

There was a trick waiting for Zito at the motel, and it was supposed to just be a quick fuck, but the trick liked the look of him, running his hands over the steep curve of Zito’s shoulders, pushing his dick hard into Zito’s throat and Zito sighed through his nose, swallowed around him. He’d lost his gag reflex when he was sixteen, but people were always testing him.

And then the trick offered him five hundred dollars for the night, far more than usual, and Zito couldn’t say no. He wished futilely that they had a working phone at their place, so he could call Harden and talk him through the bad part of the second-day clean, when Harden’s mind was again clear enough to remember how nice being high was.

The trick called him Cody. Zito didn’t know where the fuck Mulder pulled these names from.

Zito got out of there at sunrise, the trick snoring and making the bed shake. There was a mirror with a couple rails of coke on it at the foot of the bed, the lines blurring as the trick shifted. Zito’s whole mouth was numb, white pressure behind his eyelids.

He half-ran home, picturing seared Pyrex pipes, shattered syringes. He was a block away and someone called his name.

Zito would have ignored it, but the voice was familiar, astonishingly so.

He slammed to a stop and slowly turned, and Eric Chavez was there, crumpling an empty coffee cup and tossing it into a doorway, black hair and brown eyes and he was wearing their middle school’s gym T-shirt.

Zito hadn’t seen him in five years. For a long second, he couldn’t even think of Chavez’s name.

Chavez came up to him and he looked completely terrified, jamming his hands into his pockets. “Hi, stray,” he said in a low voice. Zito’s mouth opened but nothing came out. Chavez trained his eyes over Zito’s shoulder, asking tonelessly, “How’s it going?”

Zito’s head snagged to the side. Chavez wasn’t supposed to be here. They were supposed to be three-times removed. “What are you doing here, Ricky?” he managed.

Chavez swallowed. “I’ve been looking for you. For a. A really long time, man. Somebody from back home said they mighta seen you around here. I just. I wanted to check.”

Shaking his head, Zito said without thinking, “I’ve got to go. There’s, there’s somebody I have to see.” He made as if to turn, a flash of black in the corner of his eye, their building, their window four stories up and Harden asleep on the mattress, eating soup maybe, in the shower burning the week off his skin. Chavez caught his arm.

“Don’t do that,” Chavez said desperately. “I’d. I’d like to talk.”

“About what?” Zito couldn’t stop looking at Chavez’s mouth. He’d never been able to.

Chavez moved his shoulders uncomfortably. The light was growing in the corners and angles of things, pressed like fingers against Chavez’s throat. “Can I come upstairs?”

“No,” Zito said automatically, and then winced. They’d grown up together, Zito in the top bunk and Chavez in the bottom, since Zito was eight years old. All Zito wanted to do was leave him on the street and run up the four flights, lock the door behind him.

Zito had fucked it up. He’d been given everything, and he fucked it up.

Chavez was looking at him with that terrible helpless expression that Zito remembered very well. Zito remembered being fifteen years old and accidentally handcuffing himself to Chavez for one joyful weekend before the replacement key came in the mail.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s go get some coffee or something,” he said. Chavez nodded, vaguely wounded.

Chavez couldn’t keep quiet on the walk to the diner; he wasn’t the keeping quiet type. He’d graduated from a technical college in two years and now he fixed computers. He still lived at home, the same cluttered ranch house with Zito’s initials carved into the doorframes, souvenirs from when Zito had been inchoate and stunned with rage to be in his fifth foster home in a year, not believing for a moment that he’d be allowed to stay.

Chavez still saw some of their friends from high school. He still surfed, sometimes. He glanced at Zito as they walked, his hand turning in the air like he wanted to brush the backs of his knuckles across the backs of Zito’s.

He was exactly as Zito remembered him. Maybe gun-shy, maybe older than he should have been, but his face still made Zito twist inside, his hair was still as shiny as cheap vinyl.

They sat in a back booth and Zito wove his fingers together on the tabletop, salt scratching at the undersides of his wrists, and said, “Okay, so talk.”

Chavez’s throat ducked, and he looked down, his eyebrows lowering. “I wanted. I was hoping that you’d. Come home.”

Zito blinked at him, his airway briefly cut off. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

Chavez raised his eyes, his hands clenching on the lip of the table. “You can. Dad’s been asking for you.”

“He has?”

Chavez nodded emphatically. “He didn’t mean what he said, man, he didn’t mean for you to just disappear.”

Zito watched his hands pressing into each other, white spots hardening on his knuckles. He could taste the drip of the coke in the back of his throat, and the coffee didn’t help, scouring his vocal chords.

Chavez’s father had walked in on the two of them, a few months before the end of senior year. His son and the stray, tied together like vines in the bottom bunk, Zito’s hands clutching Chavez’s wrists, Chavez’s legs hooked over Zito’s shoulders.

Chavez had begged his father’s forgiveness and Chavez’s father hadn’t spared him a glance, screaming at Zito over and over again, _I let you into this house_. Screaming at him, _no son of mine_.

Zito took what he could carry, and left before Chavez had stopped crying. Hitched his way north and slept on front porches and in homeless shelters, dreaming of the carpeted floors and rocket-ship sheets of the house in San Diego, waking up with ash in his mouth and a deep pain in his chest, until a month had passed, three months, a year.

Five years.

“He meant it,” Zito whispered. “He was right.”

Chavez’s hand came creeping across the table, and Zito jerked his away before Chavez could touch him. Chavez told him, “It was never like you thought. He’s missed you every day since. It was like when Mom died. Worse, even, because he’d made you go. He used to spend his weekends driving around looking for you.”

Zito looked at him in surprise, thinking of all the times he’d seen old mermaid-green Cadillacs and his heart had stopped, scanning the windshield to see if his dad was inside.

Chavez sucked in a breath between his teeth. “He’s had two heart attacks now and he keeps talking about all the stuff he wishes he’d done different. He keeps asking for you.”

Zito shook his head, his thoughts fracturing, caught up on a loop, two heart attacks, two heart attacks. “Is he, is he okay?” Zito asked, his voice splintering.

“No. He needs to get his family back together.”

Chavez had always been able to do that to him, cut him to the quick, deep enough that it would kill him without even leaving a mark. Chavez was supposed to be his brother, but Zito had never really felt that way about him.

“I can’t,” Zito said, almost too quiet to hear. He thought frantically that Harden must be awake by now.

Chavez’s face warped, and he kicked Zito hard under the table. Zito gasped in pain and cowered back into the booth, staring balefully at him.

“Yes you fucking can,” Chavez said angrily. “I’ve been trying to find you for five years, man. I. You’ve got to come home. If not for me, then for him. What’s so fucking important that you can’t come home?”

Zito covered up his face with his hands, his elbows on the table. He thought about the trick last night, who’d asked with a smirk, what do you do, and Zito had answered like he always did, whatever you want.

He couldn’t go home. Not like this.

“I’m sorry,” Zito said into his hands. “I’m not the same as when I left. He wouldn’t even recognize me.”

Chavez touched Zito’s arm, skated his nails down the line of bone. “You look the same to me.”

Peering at him between his fingers, Zito muttered, “You’ve always been blind.”

Chavez’s eyes snapped like pilot lights. Zito’s shin ached. “What the fuck have you done?” Chavez asked, steam from his coffee rising into his face.

Zito took his hands down, breathed out steadily. “All the bad stuff. Everything,” he said, feeling so bad he expected to see claws wrenched into his chest. Chavez just looked at him for a long minute, tired like he’d driven all night, though home was only two hours south and he could be back by lunchtime.

“I promised him that when I found you, I’d make it right again,” Chavez told him. He sounded brittle.

Zito couldn’t stand it. “Don’t tell him you found me,” he said, and got up. Chavez said his name, tried to stop him, but Zito shook him off, stumbled out of the diner into the morning, wanting nothing but to get back to Harden, the one thing he could save.

The empty apartment should not have affected him as it did. Seeing Chavez standing across the street, staring up at his window, did not help. Zito stood with his hand up on the wall, meeting Chavez’s eyes across the four stories of space that separated them. He knew it was only a matter of time before Chavez would give up and leave him, same as anybody else Zito had ever loved, and this time, at least, Zito wanted to be watching when it happened.

*

Mulder followed Crosby one night, hoping that he would see something that would make sense. Crosby was a thief and a liar and better than any boy Mulder had ever had before. His hair was growing in like grass, cotton under Mulder’s hands.

Crosby took the 16 bus east on Santa Monica Boulevard, all the way to Oakwood, and Mulder trailed in his car, glimpsing the back of Crosby’s head and the side of his face through the waxed plastic window, Crosby’s ear, the slice of his neck into his shoulder. He got off at where the shop signs blended from Korean into English, the street yellow-lit.

Mulder idled at the curb, both hands on the wheel and his chin near his knuckles, watching Crosby duck into a corner market and come out with a bottle of orange juice in his hand, mixing shots in his mouth from the flask of vodka he carried in the inside pocket of his coat, which Mulder knew plenty well, from the times Crosby had pushed Mulder’s head back with a hand in his hair, poured liquor down his throat.

Crosby spit in the gutter, walked five blocks into the neighborhood with Mulder a half a block behind him, his headlights off. Crosby went into a little unremarkable house with asphalt for a front yard, and a minute later the attic light went on. The moon was a sickle, stars like spilled sugar and the high shriek of alley cats rose above the trees.

Mulder didn’t know what to think. It was all too normal, and therefore not to be believed. He stayed out there, watching shadows move across the attic window, and Crosby tapped at the driver’s side window, making Mulder jump and yelp in shock.

Crosby was grinning at him. Mulder thought briefly about slamming the car into gear and flooring it, but then he’d never be able to look at Crosby again. He rolled down the window, already sighing.

“You lost?” Crosby asked amiably.

Mulder glared at him. “How the fuck did you get out here?”

“Back door.” Crosby snickered, sounding like a twelve year old. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”

“Whatever,” Mulder muttered, clenching his hands on the wheel. His face was hot and tight.

“You’re, like, the worst spy in the world.” Crosby was still grinning. Mulder kinda wanted to hit him.

“I was not spying.” Crosby lifted his eyebrows in disbelief and Mulder didn’t like the casual knowledge in his eyes. He knew everything that should have mattered about Crosby, the places that made him keen and the swift drive that made him gasp in air like his lungs were collapsing, but Mulder wasn’t sure if his name was really Bobby.

“Good thing, too,” Crosby said. “So what’d you come out here for?”

Mulder’s arms twitched and he punched the button for the door locks. Crosby smiled big and went around to the passenger side, climbed in the shotgun seat as if they were just friends on the way to a bar or the bowling alley or somewhere inconsequential like that.

“You never said where you lived. I was. Curious.” Mulder thought quickly, he could win trust and affection and then he could have everything. He’d done it a thousand times before.

Crosby was studying him, easily settled in Mulder’s car with his leg crooked, his knee resting against the door. “You coulda asked.” Mulder didn’t answer, and Crosby smiled meanly. “But I guess you don’t really like asking, huh.”

“Look-” Mulder began, and he was gonna tell Crosby to watch his fucking mouth and not talk about shit he didn’t understand, but Crosby cut him off.

“Those boys who’re always coming by your place, they’re not really your friends, are they?”

Mulder looked at him in shock. Crosby laughed, and put his hand on Mulder’s face, pressing his palm against Mulder’s cheek.

“You’re so fucking hot I can’t even deal with it,” Crosby said, and kissed him, licked the roof of Mulder’s mouth and drew Mulder’s lower lip between his teeth, vodka and orange juice and Mulder figured they both must be drunk. Crosby’s free hand moved nimbly up his thigh, and Mulder sighed, let his legs fall open. He tried to remember if the car was in park or not, whether they would go coasting into the street and die bloody and young.

“Ask me, Mark,” Crosby whispered. “I like money too, and I don’t care.” He kissed him again, fiddling with the zipper of Mulder’s fly. “I’ve been worse things than this.”

Mulder didn’t believe him. It was impossible. Still, he pulled away and touched his forehead to Crosby’s, breathing on his mouth. “You want a job, Bobby?” he asked, feeling a curious strain of possessiveness in the tautness of his arms, his mouth feeling swollen. He would charge five hundred dollars a night for Crosby, more than anyone else he had.

He thought hysterically, ‘I can afford five hundred dollars a night.”

Crosby smiled brightly, pushed closer to him, and the windows clouded, leaving them choked by the heat, idiotically searching for oxygen in each other’s lungs.

*

He was dreaming of home, white fields and gray coast. The freakish chill of winter and he would bike to school as fast as possible, his eyes peeled for ice on the road, his breath shattering against his face and his hood up, covering his ears. Trees growing in the shape of a man with his arms raised. The boats on the water in the summertime, like soot in the sky. People who smiled to see him, hugged him hard when he was a little boy and his ribs creaked under the pressure of the embrace.

Harden came to abruptly, yanking himself upright. Canada vanished. He found himself staring up at a bare ceiling lined with pipes. A washing machine clanked and hummed somewhere nearby. His head throbbed and he didn’t know where he was. He needed to get out of here immediately, run back to anywhere that looked familiar.

“Hey,” someone said softly. Harden whipped around and fell off the couch. He’d been lying on a couch? He was so confused. He crouched on the floor defensively, his fists pressed to his legs.

The prettiest boy in the world was sitting in a metal folding chair, his eyes big, hands held out in supplication. “Oh, um, sorry. Didn’t mean to spook you. You just, you’re awake now. Hi.” He waved lamely, and then grimaced, as if thinking, god, so dumb.

Harden just stared at him, his bewilderment huge and alive inside him. The prettiest boy in the world thankfully saw it and hurried to explain.

“You passed out. I tried to wake you up but it didn’t work. Me and my brother carried you down here. I told him you were a friend, swore him to secrecy. This is our rec room. It’s okay. Okay?”

The boy’s face was wide open and as flawless as a painting. His voice was all country, vague accent thickened by anxiety. Harden let himself relax, nodding carefully. He climbed back onto the couch, curiously watching his hands tremble on his knees. He could remember rooms like this, posters of rock bands and stacks of videocassettes, a Dodgers pennant tacked to the wall, a framed football jersey autographed and under glass. The washing machine rolling like a heartbeat in the background of everything.

Harden noticed that his shoes were lined up by the concrete steps, his socks tucked tidily inside. He cocked his head, weirdly amused by the care evident in that.

“You don’t have a wallet,” the boy said, visibly nervous.

Harden glanced at him, his back tense again. “You went through my stuff?” he asked shortly.

The boy flushed, looking guiltily at the floor. “I, um, I was gonna call your mom. So that she wouldn’t worry. And you wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“My mom?” Harden repeated, the word having little meaning to him.

“I guess you probably don’t live at home,” the boy said, rambling, his hands fluttering. “Guess you’re probably a student or something. That’s cool. That’s, you know. Good for you. But, um. You don’t have a wallet, and I was wondering. What’s your name?”

Harden searched, but he couldn’t see an ulterior motive anywhere in the boy’s face. It reminded him of Zito’s jacket on his back, the thirty-three dollars he’d taken from Zito before they’d even met. He answered, “Rich.”

The boy grinned, looking so good it was kind of scary. Harden’s head felt like it was about to fall off. He wanted some speed. He wanted to take the boy’s shirt off and see the shapes his bones made under his skin.

“I’m Huston,” the boy said. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever wake up.”

He held out his hand and Harden didn’t recognize the gesture for a minute; it’d been years since anyone had tried to shake his hand.

*

It had been nearly forty-eight hours since Zito had left Harden passed out in the main room. Forty-eight hours since he’d seen Harden last, and the fear was whining in his mind like a train whistle, getting louder with the approach.

Zito went to see everyone who might know where Harden was, his drug buddies out in the hills, the other boys under Mulder’s control who smirked as co-workers should when Zito showed up at their doors, the bartenders at Harden’s favorite club and the clerks who sold ripped T-shirts and faded jeans. Harden’s dealer with the black lipstick and nail polish, who had never been above getting his cock sucked in exchange for a gram bag—a seriously fucked-up barter economy. The only person who’d seen him was a waitress at the diner, who remembered him spitting blood and tipping well. She hadn’t seen what direction he’d gone off in.

Zito wanted to print up flyers and tack them to the telephone poles. Put out an all-points bulletin on the radio, this song goes out to Richie and please come home. He was pretty sure Harden was dead in a motel room somewhere.

Mulder was in the corners of his search, sniping at Zito third-hand through the others, but Mulder was wrapped up in something else and Zito avoided his place, so they never touched directly.

Chavez was still hanging out in the neighborhood, ditching work to stare at Zito with hollow eyes from across the street, trail him until Zito hopped a fence and ducked through a friend’s apartment and lost him. Chavez was there again when Zito got back, his face betrayed. Zito thought about cracking his fists into Chavez until his knuckles bled. He thought about saying fuck it and leaving everything behind, but Harden was missing.

Zito got back and the light was on in their apartment. He panicked for a moment and was sure that Chavez had broken in, found Zito’s little black book, the price guide and customer preference, and learned the reason why Zito couldn’t come home. He ran up the stairs and his blood drumbeat in his ears and Harden was heating soup on the stove, his head snapping up as Zito burst in, Harden’s body going fight-or-flight rigid before he recognized him.

They stared at each other for a moment, Harden’s hand hovering over the pot, Zito breathing hard. Then Harden smiled and he was still clean, Zito could tell, by the clarity of his eyes and the appetite evidenced by the soup, and Harden was saying, “Hey, man, where’ve you been?”

Zito collapsed back against the wall. He swore and his eyes felt like hubcaps. “You cannot just fucking _leave_ , Richie, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

Harden looked surprised, setting down the spoon on the countertop where it bled out a small orange-red lake. He lifted his hands blamelessly. “I was okay. I was with a friend.”

“I’ve talked to all your friends,” Zito said, sneering. “Nobody’s seen you, so stop lying. Just. Quit it.”

“A new friend,” Harden answered, hesitantly crossing to him, putting up his hand alongside Zito’s shoulder. “I, I’m sorry, man, I didn’t realize you’d freak.”

And Zito wanted to laugh, wanted to shout, how could you not realize? He couldn’t stand this blindness around him, everything was so fucking obvious if people would just open their eyes.

He tilted forward, his center of gravity destroyed, and Harden caught him around the shoulders, whispered against his neck, “sorry, sorry, didn’t mean it,” until Zito felt like his back had been broken.

He made as if to kiss Harden, parting his lips and angling his head, and he hit Harden’s cheek, unsure if he’d swerved or if Harden had dodged. He laid his teeth down tight on the jag of Harden’s cheekbone, thinking that it didn’t really matter if his aim was bad or Harden’s instinct for self-preservation was good. His hands alit on Harden’s hips and his heart slowed and stilled until it was the same calm pace as Harden’s, until they both would have been declared dead if anyone else had been paying attention.

*

They went down to Nicky’s to find Mulder, Harden still clean and Zito still shaky, touching Harden’s elbow every few steps, checking behind him to make sure Chavez wasn’t following. Harden kept tripping over cracks in the sidewalk, thinking about Street and the gleam of his skin, the purse of his lips as he whistled for Ed.

Mulder was at the end of the bar, drinking Jack, long fingers resting scarred on the wood. He didn’t look surprised to see Harden, and didn’t mention anything about Zito paying off his debts for the past week. He was watching a kid Harden didn’t recognize, a kid with a brush cut and funny-looking ears, attempt to talk up some of the regulars who knew better than to take him up on it.

“You ready to go back to work, Richie?” Mulder asked, never taking his eyes off the brush-cut kid.

“Definitely,” Harden said, smiling. They’d had more than enough money for awhile now, but Harden probably wouldn’t be clean for much longer. Two thousand dollars was water down the drain when it came to crystal meth, and Harden could feel addiction sinking teeth into his veins, making him grit his teeth.

He’d spent a long afternoon in Huston Street’s rec room, recovering from the blow. Playing videogames and eating Fruit-by-the-Foots, drinking Sunny Delight, switching clothes from the washer to the dryer and folding jeans, balling up socks. Harden felt like he’d stepped into a black-and-white movie, some place where words meant everything and nothing ever exploded.

Huston Street wore a crucifix around his neck and had skipped church to make sure Harden didn’t pass out again, talking with large eyes about concussions and how you had to stay awake, he’d learned it from _ER_. Street stuck posters of Britney Spears to his wall with push-pins, and he wasn’t fifteen, he was seventeen—he’d had to show Harden his driver’s license before Harden had believed it.

The specifics didn’t particularly matter; all that counted was that Harden probably wouldn’t get to fuck him. Some speed as clear as window glass would be just as good, though.

“Good,” Mulder replied. “Your skinny ass has been in high demand. For some fucking reason.”

Harden wrapped his arm around Zito’s shoulder, Zito who’d been oddly quiet all night, and said, “I live to serve.”

Nobody said anything for a moment, then Zito asked abruptly, “Is that Bobby?” nodding at the brush-cut kid.

Harden didn’t recognize the name, but Mulder flinched, shooting a look at Zito that would have set him on fire in a perfect world.

“Yeah.”

Harden studied the kid, stick-out ears and heavy eyebrows, big shoulders. “He’s hot. New?”

Mulder grunted, curling his hand tensely around his drink.

Zito said with a strange indecent twist to his mouth, “I thought you were keeping him all to yourself.” Harden’s eyes widened, because Mulder had never taken well to being taunted and Zito knew that.

But Mulder was just staring at the kid, who was being told to fuck off for the fourth or fifth time, and the kid turned to look back at Mulder with an angry confused expression on his face. Harden knew what that was like, after a lifetime of being good-looking and drawing people to you, to come up to them with money in your eyes and have them be able to see it, snarl at you and leave you unwanted, alone.

“I guess you can buy him if no one else will,” Zito continued, unbelievably over the line, and Harden wanted to grab him by the arm and haul him off into the bathroom, berate him for putting their life in jeopardy like this, and ask him what had happened while Harden was passed out in Huston Street’s rec room, because Zito didn’t look quite the same.

Mulder only smiled hard and answered, “Goddamn right I can,” before telling Harden about a faux-married couple that wanted a threesome, telling Zito about a trick so deep in the closet he was practically drywall, who’d only come to Mulder because it didn’t count as cheating on his wife if it was a man sucking him off. Harden noticed again that he’d somehow lost the ability to say no. They watched the brush-cut kid as he started talking to someone who didn’t recognize him for what he was, and Mulder’s hand clenched on the glass.

Zito sat close enough that Harden could feel the line of Zito’s leg all the way down the line of his own. Street had said something about renting a video and sleeping in the rec room, and Harden had lit up like a radio tower, but he’d had to turn down the invitation to come home and let Zito breathe again, to come here and see Mulder gradually lose it over the latest boy.

Things were returning to normal. Zito’s arm was around his waist as they left the bar, Zito’s firm weight against him, and Zito’s voice in his ear as they went their separate ways, “be careful, man, I’ll see you at home.”

Harden was feeling nothing but clean, hating it for all that it was and was not, hoping against hope that one of the men who’d fuck him tonight would be sweet-faced and lightly accented, pure as a glass of milk.

*

Zito had no conception of the passage of time. The days all looked the same, as they had since he’d left his makeshift family behind. He passed Eric Chavez on the curb sometimes, never sure whether it was Tuesday or Friday or Sunday. Chavez stared at him as he walked past with his head down, his hands in fists in his pockets, hard enough to leave moon-shaped dents in his palms.

He dreamed about Chavez on occasion, sheer reckless dreams like those he’d had when he was just a kid and was sure he was going to hell for thinking about his adopted brother in such a way. Convinced that it was a trick, a fucking test, worse than geometry and the rules of parallel lines, to see how strong he was and how long he could hold out.

Zito had stayed away from Chavez for about a year, and then one day surrendered, his back giving in, his shoulders crushed. Chavez had been shocked for a moment, the first second of fireworks in the sky, and then he’d kissed Zito back, hard like any other game they’d ever played before.

Now nothing had space or chronology. Chavez was on the sidewalk and Zito was lost. He coordinated himself around Danny Haren, because they met on Thursdays, every other day Haren had baseball practice or history class or a sham date with his girlfriend.

Haren was the best distraction Zito knew, all acute astonishment at everything Zito did to him and fierce pride in the simple wreck of a life that had led Zito to be a prostitute, as if being an honest criminal was better than being a hypocrite talking about pussy in the locker room.

Haren said to him, “Clothes are stupid,” and dragged his hands over Zito’s shoulders, under his shirt. “Your clothes in particular are totally uncool.”

Haren had been on the internet again, looking up new things to try, and he asked for everything with his ears dark red, staring at the cigarette burns in the sheets, and Zito kept wanting to remind him, you’re _paying_ me, that means I do anything.

But Haren knew he wouldn’t say no, that wasn’t why he was embarrassed. It was just how he was. He didn’t like saying the word ‘sex’ out loud, and didn’t look Zito in the eyes when he made his requests, and never said anything but saints’ names and curses when they were in the middle of it.

So Zito fucked him quietly, tongue first like Haren had seen on the blue screen of his computer, fingers next and cock last, and Haren thrashed around and almost snapped Zito’s jaw with one jerk of his hips. Haren chanted with his hands in Zito’s hair, pleasepleaseplease like a ritual.

Zito got irrationally mad at him, towards the end of it, Haren on his stomach with his face pressed into the bed, Zito’s hands driving his hips, because these were the lines for Haren, this fucking teenage fantasy that he wouldn’t have had to pay for if his father hadn’t been an asshole. Haren would have experimented this out of his system while he was still in high school, if things had been different, and he would have no need for Zito. As it was, Zito’s tongue in his ass had made him swear eternal devotion, which was nothing that Zito had asked from him.

Zito didn’t think lines even existed for him anymore, no more than income tax or seeing his family on holidays.

Afterwards, Haren lit the jay he’d rolled and found some cartoon on the television, asked Zito, “How’s your friend? The one you live with, right?”

Zito breathed smoke, thinking about the contraptions he and Chavez had created to hide the smell when they were kids, exhaling into a cut-off plastic bottle stuffed with dryer sheets. “He’s fine.”

Haren looked at him sideways, Zito’s face pinched as he took his second hit. “He’s, uh, he’s like you, yeah? Same line of work?” Zito nodded, his mind starting to fracture. He handed Haren the jay, and Haren rolled it between his fingers, furrowing his brow.

“You probably, like, practice with him, huh? To make sure you’re both real good at it?”

Zito snorted. “I was born good at it, Danny.” A commercial for condoms went flitting past, surreally timed. “And we’re just friends.”

Haren lifted a disbelieving eyebrow, grinning cynically. “You live in the same house and you both like dick—just friends, I’m sure.”

The fact that Haren had spent his life carefully under wraps had convinced him that every other gay man lived in a world of non-stop blowjobs. Zito had found that charming, at first.

“Strange but true,” Zito said. Haren handed him the joint back and a piece of the cherry flew off onto the back of Zito’s hand. It didn’t hurt for a second and then it did, instinctive pain like a bee sting, his hand spasming. Zito took a couple extra hits to compensate, a tiny black spot seared between his knuckles.

“It’s not, like, some big unrequited love thing, right?” Haren asked, his eyes narrowing in something like jealousy even as Zito started to laugh, started to choke. Haren pounded him on the back and slowly Zito’s breath came back.

“No, it’s not like that,” Zito said, tears in his eyes. “He’s just this guy I know, that’s all. Doesn’t matter.” He started coughing again, salt in his mouth and small bits of flame in his throat. Haren hopped off the bed to get him some water, and Zito leaned back, struggling for air, dreaming of a place where things could be as easy as they looked through Danny Haren’s eyes.

*

Mulder kept waiting for Crosby to break. He kept his door unlocked all the time, waiting for Crosby to show up bloodied with his shirt torn, the skin over his knuckles split like small mouths. Crosby had been bored and he didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into. Mulder wasn’t sure what’d it take for Crosby to figure it out, but he could wait.

Crosby only ever came with money and a cocky grin on his face. He was still finding his way, learning what kind of guys to approach and how to make sure they paid him in advance, what a red handkerchief in his back pocket meant, but he was pretty good for a rookie.

Mulder gave him 3 Musketeers for dinner at two in the morning, got him high on sugar and drunk on money, his hands on the back of Crosby’s neck. Crosby grinned up at him and he tasted like tequila half the time and Mulder didn’t care. Mulder was running his client list through his head, trying to find someone who’d scare the life out of Crosby, make him run away and run back here.

He asked, “How do you like the job?”

Crosby turned his head so that his cheek roughed up the inside of Mulder’s forearm. His teeth flashed white like a cat’s. “Why doesn’t everyone want to get paid for this?”

Mulder shifted so that his legs were snicked like puzzle pieces between Crosby’s, their stomachs pressing together. Mulder had been sending Crosby out to all the worst, the oldest, ugliest, cruelest, and Crosby came back smiling, talking about some hot club boy he’d seen while leaving the motel.

Nothing seemed to touch him. Mulder thought back and the last time that had happened had been Zito, Zito who would take any sort of abuse with perfect resignation as if he was doing penance, Zito who used to come around with bruises on his throat and rope burns on his wrists, black-eyed and exhausted, never complaining. The first year of their acquaintance, Mulder had almost gone crazy trying to think of something that would get a rise out of Zito, and had no success until a painfully gaunt kid with holes sunk in his face came to Mulder’s place wearing Zito’s jacket.

“Most people got morals, I guess,” Mulder said, working a hand free to mess with Crosby’s chest through his shirt. Crosby squirmed, starting to rock up against him.

“I got morals,” he protested, reaching backward to grab the headboard and improve the angle their bodies made together. “How’s it not moral? Who’s it hurt?”

Mulder didn’t answer, popping the button on Crosby’s jeans, rolling his weight to the side to get a clear shot. He licked Crosby’s ear. Crosby didn’t know anything about pain, but he’d learn.

“It’s a good job, Mark,” Crosby told him, his breath drawing ragged. “Better than the fucking bike shop.”

Mulder stopped, his hand half into Crosby’s jeans, blinking down at him. Crosby never talked in detail and most of the time Mulder was pretty sure that Crosby had materialized on the deck the night they’d met, appeared like a magic trick in order to steal Mulder’s wallet.

“Bike shop?”

Crosby nodded impatiently, twisting his hips trying to get Mulder’s hand to move. “My dad owns it. New and repaired. Didn’t like sales, so I. I used to fix bikes. Now, c’mon, c’mon.”

He grabbed Mulder’s wrist and pushed his hand farther in. Mulder started jerking him off distractedly, more confused than ever. Crosby could have been anything, an undercover federal agent, a Russian spy, a runaway billionaire’s son with an army of private detectives trailing him. Some kind of great mystery, a revelation, the only way to make sense of him.

Mulder felt betrayal slick his throat, glaring and tightening his grip, watching as Crosby’s eyes fell shut, his mouth open and soundless, his hand on the headboard pulling his arm taut.

*

Harden finished the trick with a swallow and a smirk, then sat back on his heels, the navy blue light of the backroom clouding him. The trick handed him the money, his hand unsteady, and Harden tucked it in the secret inside pocket he’d sewn into his jeans so that he would stop getting robbed all the time, and went back out into the club.

He found Zito, still trying to score his own trick, and kissed him on the cheek, shouted “I’ll see you in the morning,” over the pound of the music. Zito looked like he wanted to say something for a second, but he ended up just nodding, mouthing, have fun.

Harden paid Mulder and Mulder said something smart about Harden having his form back, but Harden was already halfway across town, and Mulder was only background noise. Harden jittered on the bus like he was high, eyelids peeled all the way back.

The small window of the rec room glowed from under Street’s house. Harden crept around back to where there was a short flight of concrete steps and a backdoor. The door was chocked open with a deck of cards. Harden could smell popcorn and hear the sprightly Mario Bros. theme music.

It was the fourth night in a row, and three weeks since they’d met for the second time. Harden’s life was neatly divided, everything a dream and then he woke up on the bus, turning into Street’s clean little neighborhood.

Street had three younger brothers, two of whom were twins that Harden couldn’t tell apart. Street’s brothers came and went, their bedtimes earlier, and they listened to everything that Street said like little brothers should. Street spent his days painting houses, counting down until school started again. Though he always showered when he got home, Harden kept spotting bits of paint that Street had missed, behind his ear, the back of his arm, the side of his neck.

Street’s family had moved from Texas when he was thirteen, so the accent was here to stay, though it had faded with every hour Harden spent in his company, Street picking up the splintered edges of Harden’s speech, his slang and the way his voice lifted like a question at the end of almost everything. They would talk about all sorts of dumb things, and Street always played Luigi because Luigi was the one who never got the videogame named after him.

He was excited about being a senior this year, he’d be a starter on the varsity football team and then baseball in the spring, of course. He’d broken up with his girlfriend when school had ended, but he was pretty sure he’d be able to win her back once they were seeing each other every day again. He told Harden about how, when he was a freshman, they’d duct-taped him to a streetlight and covered his face with the letter F in blood-red ink, and Street would be the one to break the tradition this year, because he’d been scared, unable to move, the tape digging into his wrists.

Harden was unclear on what Street wanted with him. The only reason he kept coming around was the fact that Street was the kind of perfect people threw away everything to chase. Harden didn’t have the makeup for epic quests, but he could do this for a little while, at least until he got tired of being clean.

Street found a magic feather and started flying around the screen, gathering gold coins. He asked Harden, “What’d you do tonight?”

Harden flashed back to the trick, the pulse on his tongue and the circle of his thumb and forefinger, Zito dodging worriedly in the back of his mind, and answered, “Went to a club. Met some friends.”

“That’s cool,” Street said, nodding, his eyes fixed on the television, his fingers clicking on the controller. Ed was curled on the rug in front of them, occasionally lifting his head to look at them nonplussed when they got loud. “I can never get into clubs. They always know that I’m too young.”

“I got a fake ID. I can get you one, if you want.” Harden didn’t think it’d do much good; the best fake ID in the world wouldn’t sell Street well enough for any bouncer in town.

“That’s okay. I don’t think I’m really the club type.” Street tilted his head to the side, the tip of his tongue creeping out on his lower lip. Harden stared, safe because Street was watching the screen.

They played for a little while longer, trading off whenever they died or finished a level. Harden was hurling fireballs at a mutant toad and Street wanted to know, “You’re not really a student, are you?”

Harden twitched, focusing on the game, wondering why it had taken Street three weeks to ask. “Never said I was.”

“So what do you do, then?”

 _Whatever you want_ , and it was halfway up Harden’s throat by pure instinct, before he grabbed hold of it and flung it back down.

“I. I work for a friend of mine,” he said, understanding on some very basic level that neither the truth nor a bold lie were options here. “I do, like. Odd jobs for him.”

“You’re lucky,” Street said, and Harden glanced at him in disbelief, but Street was just slouched on the couch with his knee drawn up. “Getting to work for a friend, I mean. Almost like just hanging out, but getting paid.”

“Not quite,” Harden said with a hard little smile, thinking about Mulder’s hand on his shoulder, on the back of his head, unbuttoning his jeans and promising him more money than he’d ever seen before.

Street shifted so that his knee was against Harden’s hip. Harden went very still, feeling sweat rise at his hairline. “How come you didn’t go to college?” he asked.

 _Too busy being a drug addict_ , but Harden couldn’t say that either. He shrugged, Street’s knee pressing a solid ring through his jeans. “Just didn’t. Always got by okay.”

Luigi got killed by an evil flower, and Harden handed the controller to Street, subtly resting his arm atop Street’s bent leg and leaving it there. Street didn’t seem to notice.

“The way they talk around school, and my parents too, it’s like if you don’t go to college, you end up living on the streets.”

Harden had, in fact, lived on the streets for three months before Zito found him in that bus station. He was pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with him not going to college, though.

“It’s a possibility, I guess,” Harden said, and took a chance, sliding his hand up the line of Street’s shin, curling his fingers around the bone. Street jerked and looked at him quick, red climbing up his face. But he didn’t pull away, just swallowed with a click and turned his attention back to the game.

“I think it’s kind of incredible,” Street said after a moment. “You’re nineteen and you already got your whole life set up. I’ll be a freshman in college when I’m your age, and I won’t have anything figured out. I can’t even imagine doing what you’re doing.”

Harden’s mind flew traitorously, visions of Street on his knees in the backroom, bent over with his hands against the wall and his crucifix swinging free. Street with his mouth numb and swollen, moving gingerly and wincing at the carpet burns on his elbows and knees. It was terrible like a black hole, magnetic in the exact same way. Harden’s hand tightened on Street’s leg.

“You never know what’s gonna happen,” Harden told him, rubbing his thumb along the seam of Street’s jeans, his chest swelling with every second that Street didn’t pull away, hope running wild in Harden’s head. “You think you can’t deal with stuff until you’ve got to, and then it just seems. Normal.”

Street breathed out, and carefully set the controller down on the couch. Luigi waited motionless on the screen, the measured tramp of a mushroom guy coming to kill him and he did nothing. Street wove his fingers together and stared down, Harden’s hand moving incrementally on his leg.

“Doesn’t feel normal,” Street whispered, his voice practically a vibration. Harden followed the crook of his leg and now his hand was on Street’s thigh, which jumped in panic against his palm.

“It will,” Harden promised him, and put his other hand on Street’s face. “Give it some time.”

Then he kissed him, Street shivering like there was a monster under the bed, Street’s mouth fearful and confused under Harden’s. Harden pushed on the hinge of Street’s jaw and licked Street’s bottom lip, but it was slow and quiet, the game’s music tripping around them. Street held perfectly still, his knuckles cracking as he pressed his hands together.

Harden pulled away, bracing himself to get punched or thrown out, brokenly forbidden from ever returning. He was screaming curses in his head, ‘had to go and fucking ruin it, couldn’t just be happy and safe, had to drag him down with you, you useless piece of shit.’

But Street was just staring at him, a stranger to the world at this moment, before he touched his mouth with his fingertips and said haltingly, “You’re, you’re-”

Harden answered without thinking, “Yours,” and watched Street’s eyes get impossibly big, the pupils spiraling out. Street shook his head, in astonishment not anger, and Harden could thank God for that, if nothing else.

Experimentally, Street put a hand on Harden’s throat, then his jaw, then his ear. Harden turned into each move, trying to predict where Street would go next and getting it wrong every time, not caring even a little bit. Street touched Harden’s nose, and started brilliantly to smile.

*

Harden came in beaming, ten o’clock in the morning and pieces of popcorn stuck to his shoulders. Zito was jolted out of sleep, Harden gliding across the kitchen floor with his dirty sneakers leaving marks and his face swept clean.

“Hi?” Zito said groggily, half-sitting up and shaking off the remnants of a nightmare, his hands cold.

Harden pounced, crawling onto Zito’s mattress and punching him happily on the shoulders and chest, “hey, hey, hey,” punctuating each soft blow.

“Knock it off, dude,” Zito said, but made no move to bat Harden’s hands away. Harden was kneeling beside him, his body thrumming with joy. Zito sighed, thinking that three weeks off drugs was longer than Harden usually lasted. Zito ran through the days ahead, Harden taking more than his share of their money and disappearing, coming back stripped down and drained as white as cream, the strength chipped off his arms and legs.

“Back on it?” Zito asked, resigned. Harden flopped down, nudging his head into the hollow of Zito’s shoulder.

“What?” He was still smiling; Zito could feel it against his arm.

“You’re tweaked, Richie.”

Harden snickered, warm air on the bare skin of Zito’s chest. “Nah.”

Zito shifted to see him better, studying Harden’s eyes and his mouth, and none of the signs were there. Zito got confused, and pressed his fingers up under Harden’s jaw, Harden tipping his head accommodatingly. Harden’s pulse was easy.

“Then how come you look like you just fell out of a plane?”

Harden laughed, lying on his back with his hands under his head. “I had a good night.”

Zito didn’t know where Harden was going all the time. If Harden was still clean, then none of Zito’s guesses could be right. He didn’t like the uncertainty, the unmistakable space between them even though Harden still climbed onto Zito’s mattress and curled up against him in the middle of the morning.

He cupped Harden’s shoulder and closed his eyes, not wanting to deal with it right now. Harden hummed, running low and hot under his skin, his knees clocking into Zito’s.

“That cute Latino guy is back across the street again,” Harden said off-hand, scrambling his fingers up and down Zito’s arm, energy spurring from him. Zito’s eyes snapped open and his mouth went dry.

“You. You talked to him?”

Harden moved his head in the approximation of a negation, his hair rustling on the mattress. “He doesn’t really look like he wants to be talked to. It’s weird. He just hangs out there and his clothes are too nice for a homeless guy.”

Zito wanted to get up and go to the window, scream at Chavez, get the hell out of here, you’re fucking everything up. But that wasn’t really true. Zito guessed that if he wasn’t gonna tell Harden about Chavez, he couldn’t really expect Harden to tell him about whoever had left that hickey on his throat. It didn’t make him feel any better.

He tugged Harden a bit closer, and Harden went willingly, untampered heartbeat and long arms twining around Zito’s back. Zito felt the wetness of Harden’s hair on his cheek and wondered if it was raining outside, rarer than holidays.

Zito could barely recognize Harden when he was this clean.

He waited until Harden was asleep, his hand curled in a fist on Zito’s stomach, before cautiously disengaging and putting on some clothes. He padded barefoot down the four flights of stairs, out onto the street where pieces of gravel stuck to the soles of his feet.

Chavez was sitting on the curb, his knees up and his arms folded on top. He looked absurdly tired, listing to the side. Zito sat beside him and Chavez said something incomprehensible, blinking at Zito with his eyes bruised.

“You’ve got to stop doing this, man,” Zito said, having planned it out ahead of time, keeping his gaze focused on the parked cars. It wasn’t raining, so utterly dry it felt like it’d never rain again. “You can’t keep coming up here and hanging out on the sidewalk. It’s not healthy.”

Chavez made a harsh laughing sound. “Yeah, like you can really talk to me about healthy.”

“I’m not the one stalking you.”

“I’m not _stalking_ you, jesus.” Chavez glowered at him, rips of black hair falling across his forehead. Zito remembered in high school, when Chavez had dyed blonde highlights into his hair. The look hadn’t really worked for him, though Zito liked to push his fingers along each pale strip, glad to have a path to follow.

“I’m waiting for you to wake the fuck up,” Chavez continued. “Get over yourself, come home with me. See Dad.”

“Do you even have a fucking job anymore?”

Chavez spit on the ground. “It’s Saturday. And don’t change the subject.”

“Okay, here. Listen. I can’t come back with you. I left for a goddamn reason. Dad being sick doesn’t change that.”

Zito felt like he was gonna throw up. Chavez was looking at him with raw pain in his face, something Zito had only seen once or twice before in all the years he’d known him, the time Chavez had broken his ankle falling down into the dry cement creek and the ambulance took almost an hour because they didn’t really know where they were. The time Chavez had watched Zito jamming clothes into a backpack and cried at him, _don’t, don’t, it’s okay, you can stay._

“You’re so fucking dumb I could kill you,” Chavez said, his hands in claws on his forearms. “I’m telling you, he knows he was wrong. It was, like, spur of the moment and shit. He walked in on his sons fucking, so maybe cut him some slack for not taking it in stride.”

Zito shook his head, wanting to say, I’m not his son, but he couldn’t force the words out, not even now. “I just. I’ve got my own life now, and I can’t just leave.”

“You don’t have to stay forever,” Chavez told him, his voice hitching. “Just come say goodbye. Everything will still be here when you get back.”

Zito covered his face up with his hands, pressure like stone in his lungs. “You don’t understand.”

Because Chavez’s father would be happy to see him, if what Chavez was saying was true, their father would be overcome with relief, gratitude, his face shining with unconditional love, a flood of pride that Zito could never live up to. Zito wouldn’t be able to stand seeing that. It could never be just a day, or a week. He wouldn’t be able to leave them again, and there were things that were keeping him here, a magnet in Harden’s heart and a piece of iron in his own.

“Explain it to me, then.” Chavez put his hand on the back of Zito’s neck, drawing little circles with his thumb.

“Leaving killed me, dude,” Zito told him. “Going back would be even worse. I just, I have to believe that you’re not still down there. That he’s not. That when I left, the house disappeared and there’s nothing there now. It’s the only way I can make it through, okay.”

Chavez didn’t say anything, his hand tightening slightly.

“Everything got too fucked up.” Zito took his hands down, staring at his palms, tracing the line of his fortune. “You and me was fucked up. Him finding out was fucked up. The whole thing. I just need to forget it ever happened.”

“It’s _home_ ,” Chavez said, holding onto Zito like they were cuffed together again. “You can’t forget it happened.”

Zito shook his head, his vision blurry. Chavez had never believed him about the important stuff. He still called Zito ‘stray’ like it was a joke, and maybe it had been once, but it wasn’t now.

“I can try.” He reached up and closed his hand around Chavez’s wrist, pulling him off. He remembered a summer of his life when he’d been so intensely in love with Chavez that it struck him dumb, felt like lightning. Nothing was the same. “You’ve got to stop waiting for me.”

He was still holding Chavez’s wrist, and Chavez was staring at him with something dying in his eyes. Zito thought maybe he should kiss him, closure or something, but it was no more right now than it had been when they were brothers.

“I swore that I wouldn’t,” Chavez said hoarsely, and Zito remembered that too, fourteen or fifteen and confessing in the tent in the backyard that his greatest fear was being left behind again, and Chavez’s pinky linked with his, Chavez making him believe that it wouldn’t happen.

“I know. But it’s okay.” He let Chavez go, raised his face into the sun. “I’m letting you off the hook.”

Chavez made an awful sound that tore at Zito, and stood up. He blocked the light, his shadow falling smooth and dark across Zito’s body. “I can’t believe you,” he said, wrecked inside and out. “Can’t believe you’re doing this. You’re supposed to come with me. You got saved once and you’re supposed to pay that back.”

Zito got to his feet, his legs shaky. Chavez had been everything in the world for nine years, but that was a long time ago. “Bye, Ricky.”

Chavez’s eyes flickered and flew and then went dark. He turned away, moving stiffly in the hard-edged shadows of the buildings, his back straight and high. Zito watched until he disappeared around the corner, sure now as he’d been sure at fifteen, that this family was too good for him, this salvation was a debt beyond anything he could hope to repay.

*

Zito went over to Mulder’s, split like a wishbone, wanting above all things to see someone who hadn’t known him since he was eight years old, and someone who wasn’t Rich Harden. It was a broad potential spectrum, but Mulder was also one of the few people Zito knew who honestly couldn’t give a shit about him one way or the other, which sounded about right.

Mulder was drinking gin and Sprite, his bizarre favorite drink, MTV on in the background, and he let Zito in with barely a nod, stumbling back to the couch and thumbing through his client book, a cartoonish scowl on his face.

“You’re not working tonight,” he said, and there was rustling from Mulder’s bedroom, a thump of sneakers falling on carpet.

Zito sat in the busted armchair, sick in the pit of his stomach. “I know.”

Mulder glanced at him, his fingers tapping on the book. “Just come by to say hi?” he asked sarcastically. Zito exhaled and nodded.

Crosby came out of the bedroom, wearing a faded blue hoodie over a gray tank top, his jeans ripped in all the right places. He looked surprised to see Zito, showed him a half-grin.

“Room fifteen,” Mulder told Crosby without looking back at him. “Key’s at the front desk.”

Crosby said, “Cool,” and went over, put his hand on Mulder’s forehead and craned his head back, kissed him upside-down, Mulder’s eyes open and staring at Crosby’s throat. “I’ll see you later.”

Then Crosby was gone, the door crashing behind him like an exclamation point. Zito smirked at Mulder. “That was sweet.”

“Shut up.”

“No, seriously. Real fucking domestic.” Zito kicked his feet up on the coffee table, something Mulder hated. Mulder looked at him hotly, as if planning where to hide the body.

“Did you, like, want something?” Mulder snapped.

Zito felt the pull in his back, the blood seeping into his sock. He’d cut his foot on the gravel, walking away from Chavez. Nothing too bad, just enough to hurt. “You don’t usually keep fucking guys after you’ve put them to work.”

Mulder’s mouth twisted. “Fucked Rich a couple of times after putting him to work. Your theory sucks.”

Zito flinched, tried to keep his face blank. It wasn’t like he hadn’t known. Wasn’t like he hadn’t pictured it six thousand times, prodding it like a sore tooth. He’d never gotten the details, could never settle on which of them to ask.

“Rich wasn’t living with you at the time.”

Mulder shook his head, draining his glass. Sprite and gin tasted like varnish to Zito, but he liked the sharp clean look of it, the bubbles rising like smoke rings. “Bobby’s not living here. He’s just. He’s working a lot, and he lives halfway across town. It’s just easier for him to crash here.”

“Sure,” Zito answered, not too snide. He didn’t really care. Mulder was studying his book again, his forehead lined. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find some regulars for him,” Mulder muttered. He had a ballpoint pen and ink-stains on his hand. Zito noticed that Mulder was left-handed, trying to remember if he’d ever known that before.

“You’re good at that,” Zito acknowledged, letting his head fall back. Mulder had found him Danny, introduced them over shots like a blind date, and Danny had been so nervous, his hands tearing in Zito’s hair when Zito had sucked him off in the bathroom five minutes later.

Zito closed his eyes and listened to the soft flip of pages, the scratch of the pen. Chavez kept blindsiding him, in between thoughts of old tricks and new ones, those fucking eyes of his and Zito was terrified that he’d never see him again even though he’d told Chavez to go. It made no sense.

He focused on the sounds, scritch-scritch and Mulder murmuring names occasionally, saying things like, “nah, too nice.” It almost put him to sleep, and then Mulder was asking:

“Is he tweaking again?”

Zito’s head snapped up, his neck popping. “What?”

Mulder waved his hand impatiently. “Rich. He started back up, and you’re here because don’t want to watch him like that and you got nowhere else to go.”

Mulder talked like there was no real question about any of it. It pissed Zito off. There were other places Zito could go. He thought about Chavez again, pain spiking intently behind his eyes.

He got up and found some bourbon shining like gasoline on the breakfront. “Wrong,” he said, making the word rip at the end. “He’s still clean.”

Mulder didn’t say anything, and Zito snuck a look at him, Mulder’s profile and the arch of his hair around his ear, the book held up close to his face, tiny chicken-scratch letters that were hard to read.

“And I’ve never had a problem watching him like that,” Zito continued, taking his drink back over and slouching into the chair again.

“Right, right. Pretty little speed freak.” Mulder snorted. “You just like them chewed up and skinny as all hell.”

“I like _him_ ,” Zito said without thinking, immediately wishing he could snatch it back. He swallowed, staring down at his drink. “I mean. He’s my best friend. And he’s always been like this. If I had a problem with it, I never would have let him move in.”

Mulder made a rumbling sound, only half paying attention. “What’s it been, a month now? That’s got to be a record.”

Zito counted back, working through the most recent year of his life. Harden needing to be helped up the stairs, shivering on the floor when he’d done too much and his eyes gaped like bullet holes, his heartbeat stringing along at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, leaving thumb-sized bruises on Zito’s arms and chest. All the stuff he could remember about Harden had to do with addiction, and Harden telling him brightly at one point, “it’s not about self-destruction, man, I just don’t want to waste any time on sleep.”

Zito had tried so fantastically hard to believe that.

Mulder was right. A month clean was longer than Harden had ever been in Zito’s company.

Zito said, “Yeah.”

He was at once intensely aware of the fragility of the situation. Longer than ever before meant that each second that passed, the more likely it was that Harden was going back to it, somewhere out there tonight in the city.

Zito wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It was nice that Harden didn’t burst blood vessels in his eye anymore, show up looking like a horror-movie monster with one blue iris soaked in red, but Zito didn’t know where Harden went all the time, why he kept coming back so happy. Zito didn’t trust it. At least speed made sense, a predictable kind of decay.

He thought briefly of Eric Chavez, his past never-again waiting for him on the sidewalk, his future a nineteen-year-old drug addict with a razor blade between his teeth. None of this seemed fair.

Mulder was watching him, his hands motionless on the book. Zito tried out a smile, feeling like he had more scars than skin.

“You think maybe it’ll last this time?” Mulder asked, his voice neutral.

Zito shook his head, hating that he felt relieved at the thought. Mulder narrowed his eyes, and then shrugged, asked if Zito remembered the name of the guy who’d fucked him over a motorcycle that one time, left Zito dizzy and throttled in a slick of grease, covered totally by shredded cotton.

*

Street was nervous when he let Harden in through the back door, obviously, agonizingly nervous. Whickering hands and his head moving abruptly, snagged by wires. He wouldn’t meet Harden’s eyes, just glanced at him like he wanted to apologize or something.

Harden couldn’t blame him. Street had brought back into Harden’s awareness one fundamental truth: not everybody was fucked up. It had been years since he’d had seen evidence for that, everyone around him wearing long sleeves in the heat to hide track marks, breaking cars’ windows with skateboards and stealing CDs and clothes to sell at secondhand stores, fucking bareback for an extra hundred. The whole world looking for the best way to go crazy and the closest thing with sharp edges, and then there was Huston Street, floating up like a soap bubble, perfect unmarked boy whose parents weren’t even divorced.

Harden let Street scoot away to the far end of the couch, and got himself a Dr. Pepper from the fridge by the washing machine, licking foam off his fingers and watching Street’s eyes snap from his mouth to the wall, back to his mouth again.

Two or three days since Harden had kissed him and Street had kissed him back, maybe more curious than anything, but Harden could fix that.

“Movie?” Harden asked, letting nothing show. Just like normal, this random friendship based on videogames and that morning on the beach. Harden looked around for Ed but the dog wasn’t there, just his black and white hair scattered on the rug.

Street said, “Yeah,” and Harden clicked off the light, hearing Street jerk like a startled animal.

“The glare,” Harden explained, and Street’s head, silhouetted against the blue of the television screen, nodded cautiously.

He sat down, kept a respectable difference and thought about the way Street had tilted his head to the side to get a better angle and made small surprised noises when Harden had pressed his teeth lightly into Street’s lip. Street’s hands had pressed awkwardly on his shoulders and touched his ears with a weird kind of fascination.

Harden could hear Street swallow, his throat clicking audibly. His mouth invisible. Harden moved real slow, thinking about motion sensors and kids’ games, freeze tag and sardines and force field, staring contests, ready or not here I come.

Street was holding himself so still Harden expected to find spider-thin cracks in his face and arms, pressure-fused. Harden’s arm was lined along the back of the couch, his fingers brushing a half-inch away from the nape of Street’s neck. He could feel the blood hum under his skin, smell Street’s deodorant in the air, a lighter spark and the taste of sulfur, the roll of the pipe, glass both curved and flat against the pads of his fingers. The crystal would melt to liquid, death-smoke winding in the bowl, and he’d let that hit go. Street was breathing shallowly and staring so hard at the television it was like he could see through it, all the way out to the trees and streetlights and sidewalks.

Harden could taste speed and salt—he was getting confused.

Street said his name very softly, and Harden was hooked and yanked back in. Street turned to him in the dark, the wavering light of the movie caught up in his eyes. He looked very solemn and not much like the kid who’d laughed and thrown popcorn at Harden last week.

Last week, last week, as ever not mattering at all to Rich Harden, no more than next week could, consequences and regrets searching fruitlessly for a place within him to dig in and set up camp.

“Rich, I. I wanted to tell you that this is, um. Not really what I was expecting.”

Harden closed his fist in the couch cushion. “Are you backing out?” Thinking, ‘fuck, should have known. goddamned catholic boys.’

But Street was shaking his head, licking his lips anxiously. The press of heat on Harden’s back increased until he could almost feel his spine bowing.

“Nine hundred reasons why we shouldn’t,” Street whispered, and Harden couldn’t stand that look on his face, everything baffled and fallen open.

“That’s all you came up with?” he joked weakly, and set his hand on the back of Street’s neck, tight warm skin under his palm and the movie talking distractingly loud in the background.

Street moved his shoulders and shifted closer, their legs overlapping. “I know there’s all these reasons. But. There are four million people in this city.”

Street was looking at him meaningfully, but Harden’s mind was busy wondering what Street would let him do tonight, surely not everything, but maybe his hand, maybe his mouth. Who turned down a blowjob, in this day and age? He blinked.

“What?”

Nodding expertly, Street came still closer, his hand resting heavy on Harden’s shoulder. “Four million people and I found you twice.” Street smiled, white as a toothpaste ad. “Twice, can you believe that? I can’t believe it.”

Harden couldn’t think of anything to say. Breathe in through his lungs and out through his nose and imagine that the thin smoke could be passed along with a shotgun kiss. His vision was starting to go, utterly clear and yet shivering, his pupils feeling sluggish, a paradox like everything else in his life and Huston Street with numbers flying through his eyes, both of them half-listening for footsteps on the stairs, brothers or parents coming down to ruin this.

“I thought it was wrong, you know?” Street told him, pushing his fingers under Harden’s shirt collar. “Everybody always told me it was wrong. But then. Then I found you twice and the odds against that must be, jeez, I can’t even imagine. Astronomical. And the only explanation I can think of for it is that we’re, we’re. We were meant for this.”

Harden kissed him then, to shut him up, to cut to the chase, to get rid of this destiny talk and the flare of phantom reds in his bloodstream. Street wanted to keep it sweet and preordained, but Harden had carved a living out of being able to make this as dirty and explicit as possible. Not too long before Street was pushed back onto the couch and Harden’s mouth was streaking down his chest, Street’s T-shirt bunched up under his arms. Dragging his tongue across Huston Street’s stomach with the unassailable knowledge of never before, never before.

He was the first, and he always would be, because that was how time worked, only counting up.

Street bucked up, seventeen years old and poled by hunger, his hands polite and restrained in Harden’s hair until Harden took him deep into his throat and Street almost screamed. Harden could hear him shoving his own hand into his mouth, biting down hard on the heel, and Harden grinned messily, wetting his fingers and the low place where Street’s stomach ended. He could do this forever.

However long it’d been since Harden had last fucked around with someone who wasn’t paying him, but it was okay. Street was gold and copper and reformed cobalt and he tasted more valuable than coins, his hipbone snapping into Harden’s face and maybe he’d have a black eye tomorrow. Maybe he’d like the look of it, the dull ache when he pressed his fingers down, the swell making him half-blind.

Street would be torn up, though, guilt-stricken to have hurt him, to have left a mark. Harden skidded his hand up Street’s chest, smooth as the first draw of speed into his lungs, and thought about what Street might let him do as recompense.

*

Gin as hot as anything in Mulder’s throat, and Crosby was swimming above him, mirror-blue eyes and his hands on Mulder’s stomach. Crosby had just gotten home, pockets full of money and his face strict. Mulder couldn’t remember who he’d sent Crosby to tonight, but it must have been someone who hadn’t let him come, because Crosby was rubbing against him in all the right ways.

Mulder was drunk. He was on the carpet without knowing how he’d gotten there, his clothes rasping loud and incongruent, and Crosby was mostly on top of him, asking questions.

“He didn’t know your name,” Crosby said. Mulder worked his hand down the back of Crosby’s jeans, holding him closer. “He called you Johnny, he kept saying, Johnny always has the best boys. What’s up with that?”

Mulder smiled and shook his head, his hair crinkling. Crosby on top made him think absurdly of paperweights, pinned down against the wind. “I try not to let people know anything real about me. Safer that way.”

Crosby’s hands hooked in his belt and just stayed there, Crosby levering up to get a better look at him. “So Mark’s not your real name, either?”

Trying to kiss him, slick-mouthed and his mind whirring, Mulder got nothing, Crosby ducking out of the way at the last second. “Christ, man. Yeah, Mark’s my real name. C’mere.”

“Hang on,” Crosby said, and planted a hand next to Mulder’s head, giving him that blank innocent expression that reminded Mulder of how he’d stolen Crosby away from normalcy, a bike shop, his boyhood attic room in Oakton. “I don’t, like. I don’t know anything about you.”

“Suddenly that’s a problem?” Mulder asked, petulant and warm all over.

Crosby grinned. “Just occurred to me. You could be lying about everything.”

“So could you.”

“But I’m not.” Crosby kissed him, swooped down and sealed them together, his tongue in Mulder’s mouth and Mulder’s hand on his ass, under his jeans and his shorts and Crosby shimmering and candy-flavored.

“Where did you come from, man?” Crosby murmured against his lips. “How’d you get here?”

There were border guards and moats to protect him from this, but Mulder was drunk and Crosby wasn’t giving him anything, his fingers fluttering slightly under Mulder’s belt. He rolled his head to the side and the room wove and danced.

“South Holland. Outside Chicago. Left home when I was fifteen,” Mulder told him, breathing through his teeth in unsteady whistles. “Did this, like you, same job, until I had enough saved to not have to anymore.”

Crosby hovered, looking shrewd like he was saving up information for later. Mulder didn’t care, as long as he got to have sex with him sometime in the near future. “What about your family?” Crosby asked.

“They might not have noticed that I was even gone. Don’t think they really looked that hard. Eight years now, so I guess I’ve been declared legally dead,” Mulder said, light-headed. Drunk was good, drunk was the weight of Crosby’s hands on his stomach and the high of living underground. “Whole world, and nobody knows where I am.”

“How’s that even possible?”

“I dunno. Got lucky. Never been arrested. Learn, babe, run when you hear sirens. Best advice. Don’t keep my money in the bank, got a cash arrangement worked out with the guy who owns this building. It’s not, not all that hard to disappear.” Mulder pushed up against Crosby, trying to get back to it, but Crosby wasn’t satisfied, creases on his forehead.

“Where the fuck do you keep your money if it’s not in the bank?”

Mulder tried to shrug but the angle was all wrong. He turned his head and licked at Crosby’s arm. “Wherever, man. I’m old-fashioned. A good safe is enough for me.”

He flashed on the heavy metal safe, hunkered in the back of his closet, covered in old winter clothes from Chicago, just more than two hundred thousand dollars in there the last time Mulder checked. It was probably dumb, in this neighborhood, in his line of work, but Mulder liked to have his future nearby when he went to sleep at night.

Crosby smiled at him, said in amazement, “You’re legally dead.”

Mulder rocked his hips and Crosby caught the drift, rocked back. Mulder was so fucking drunk. “Necrophiliac,” he muttered, frankly proud of himself for coming up with such a big word.

“Zombie,” Crosby said back, and kissed him again, hotter than liquor and more valuable at this moment than all the money in Mulder’s closet, five hundred dollars a night and worth every penny.

*

Harden got off the bus and ran home, but he was still late. Zito was pacing around outside their building in his best cocksucker jeans, glow-in-the-dark bracelet dim around his wrist in the evening light. He grabbed Harden’s arm and wouldn’t let him go upstairs to change. Harden protested, but it was just for show; he liked the stickiness of his hair and the burnt toast smell clinging to him.

Zito said, “Jesus fucking Christ, you need to buy a goddamned watch. Mark said six o’clock, okay, six o-fucking-clock and I told you that like fifteen times. What are you wearing, you look like a charity case. Where the fuck have you been? This is a real good job, Richie, and you can’t just play like it doesn’t matter. Mark’s gonna kill us. I’m gonna tell him it was your fault.”

They were walking fast enough that Zito eventually lost his breath. He kept hanging on to Harden’s arm, though, fingers vised around his elbow. Harden was feeling wonderful, sugar-high and stuck on the picture of Street’s face, shocked and fascinated, watching Harden jerk off with one leg over Street’s and his free hand on the back of Street’s neck. He shook loose and wrapped his arm around Zito’s waist, grinning against his sleeve.

“Don’t mess around, Richie,” Zito said, but he put his arm around Harden’s shoulders. Harden hooked a thumb in Zito’s belt loop and kicked through the dry leaves on the sidewalk.

It was nearly autumn, taking him by surprise. A day had passed, maybe two, the summer went like a fever. Street was going back to school soon, and the beaches would be empty during the day again, the midnight movies would stop showing.

Harden liked it under Zito’s arm. Zito kept his jaw clenched and tried to stay mad, but his hand held Harden’s shoulder like an egg, his forearm brushing the silver chain of Harden’s lightning bolt necklace and making it move coldly across his skin.

“Where’ve you been going?” Zito asked him suddenly. Harden started, half-tripping, and Zito hauled him into balance again.

“Nowhere interesting,” Harden said, barely even needing to think about it. Street was a secret, and a good one, the best he’d had since he was fifteen and snorting speed off the ends of keys in his high school’s bathroom. Changing the chemicals in his brain and making him feel like he’d learned how to breathe underwater.

“You’re still not using?”

Harden spread his fingers out, thumb still in Zito’s belt loop, imaging his hand as a small wing, aerodynamically perfect. “Clean as a whistle.”

“Then this is weird.”

Zito sounded strange, staring forward so that his face was made up of lines in profile. Harden knocked their hips together, appreciating that Zito worried about him even in the absence of danger. Zito had never known him when Harden wasn’t killing himself in one way or another, so it made sense.

“I guess.” Harden smiled for no particular reason. Street had been leaving the back door unlocked, sleeping on the couch in the rec room. The summer was almost over, and his house-painting job was done, and his parents didn’t mind as long as he still showed up for dinner and drank all his milk. Harden could come over no matter how late it was, if only to make sure that no one came in and killed Street for having such stupid faith in the world.

Zito pushed his hand up under Harden’s sleeve, touching the high part of his arm. “Are you gonna stay like this for awhile?” he asked.

Harden shrugged, feeling the bite of Zito’s chewed nails on his arm. “Probably. It seems, like. A better way to be.”

“Except that you’re never around anymore.” Zito’s face ticced like he was hearing that echo in his head.

Harden turned and crowded Zito into a brief hug, laughing, messing around as if he were a freshman again and his whole life was ahead of him to ruin. “You know you’re still my favorite. Being late’s not the same as not showing up.”

Looking down at Harden with an odd hard look in his eyes, the back of Harden’s neck notched into the bend of his elbow, Zito said, “Just not used to it.”

Harden hummed and kissed the side of Zito’s neck, and then slipped out from under his arm, spinning on the sidewalk and thinking about the fall of summer, the heat of the cement, the good job waiting for them tonight, somewhere out in Los Angeles.

*

Mulder didn’t seem to care much that they were late, which irritated Zito in a weird way. Mulder was pacing, talking on the phone and only barely paying attention to them as Harden rapped his fingers on Zito’s head and pressed his nose into the back of Zito’s shoulder. Zito tracked Mulder back and forth across the room, painfully aware of Harden against his back.

Mulder pulled out tonight’s business card, a record company executive who lived in the hills, and said as they were leaving, “He wants Rich and he wants an audience, so don’t fuck it up.”

Zito used to like this kind of work better, just sitting in the corner getting to watch Harden, sketched pale skin and lavender veins raised like highways on his arms. It would be finely difficult tonight, though, to keep his expression appreciative and not sickened.

Zito watched Harden smile and flirt and take off his shirt when the trick asked. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, but different now, because Harden had a brief string of hickeys following the line of his hip, and Harden’s eyes were far away, tinted blue glass.

Zito wanted to grab hold of him, pull his hair and sink his teeth into Harden’s shoulder, wake him up into this life again. It wasn’t right for Harden to be leaving like this, in fits and starts, chipping pieces off.

Harden got to work on the trick and Zito thought abstractly that Harden had gotten awfully fucking good at this for someone who used to shake so bad his teeth would rattle. But that might have been the speed, and Harden was clean now. Zito looked for the old scars on the insides of his arms, but there wasn’t anything there.

Sometimes, Harden would pull off for a breath and his eyes would cut to the side, finding Zito in the leather armchair, flash a cocky grin and then turn his gaze back upwards, fierce worship scraping across his face. The trick muttered and pushed his hips forward and Zito watched dazedly as Harden’s fingers clenched on the man’s sides. The trick had a hand on the back of Harden’s head and the other clinging to Harden’s wrist.

Zito turned off his mind. He let image and sound fly through him without a filter, rolled between Harden on his knees with his cheeks hollowed and Chavez lying on the kitchen floor when the air conditioner had been busted and it was a hundred degrees, sweat beading on Chavez’s forehead and ice cubes melting on his chest.

Harden’s throat moved as he swallowed and the trick moaned. Everything was slower than usual—that was probably the speed, too. The absence of speed.

The trick came while staring at Zito, who stared back, his eyelids peeled. Harden caught his breath, sitting back on his heels, and the trick walked unsteadily across the room, did a few lines of cocaine without offering them any.

Zito met Harden’s eyes, the pasty color an indictment of some kind, and Zito could feel the walls of his heart collapsing inwards, a dirty smile on Harden’s face and a wet streak running down the length of his neck, limning his collarbone.

*

They got tired of being in the rec room, the flies swan-diving at the window, and so Street and Harden took Ed for a walk, almost a mile to the beach where they hadn’t really met for the first time. Street kept looking over at him, and all Harden had to do to make him smile was let their arms bump together. It was remarkable.

The beach looked less caustic than it had previously, though Harden supposed not being on his way down from a week-long high might have something to do with that. The light was soft and it was twilight, a good time for filming movies and walking the dog.

They let Ed off the leash and he ran gleefully, kicking up sand behind him. Street had a gnawed baseball that he could throw pretty far, Harden sitting in the sand with his shoes off, Street’s arm whipping a shadow across his body.

“What were you doing out here that day?” Street asked him.

Harden moved his shoulders. “Nothing, really. Resting.”

“You looked. Like. Tired.” Street touched the back of Harden’s head, and Harden turned into his hand.

“It had been a long week,” he answered, feeling like it had taken place about nine years ago.

“I remember, I yelled for Ed because sometimes he jumps on people. Your necklace was shining so bright. You didn’t move for a second and I thought maybe you were dead.”

Harden smiled, shaking his head. “Almost.”

Street sat down beside him, hanging his hands off his knees. He kept tossing the ball for Ed, but lazily. Harden wished they’d come out in the afternoon, it would have been hot and maybe Street would have taken off his shirt, maybe Harden would be able to watch the flow of muscles under his skin.

“You, like, hit on me, didn’t you?” Street said, blushing a little bit even though he’d had his hand down Harden’s pants not an hour ago. Harden had yet to hear him swear, couldn’t stop planning strategies to rip ‘mother _fuck_ ’ from him. Street wouldn’t even take the Lord’s name in vain.

“’Course I did,” he said, leaning into Street. “You were the best thing I’d seen all day.” Harden shook his head, his forehead lining. “Fuck, but it was an awful day. Best thing I’d seen all summer, okay.”

Street ducked his head, and Harden ran his hand up to cup the back of his neck. “You were kinda freaked, huh?”

Street immediately denied it, but Harden squeezed his fingers and Street fell silent before shrugging and saying, “I thought you were just a guy, you know? Regular everyday kinda guy. But then you looked at me like, um.”

Harden rested his face against Street’s shoulder and laughed lightly. “Wanted to take you under the pier and—”

“Yeah,” Street cut him off, blushing intensely now. “Like that. I’m not exactly. Used to people looking at me like that.”

“You should be,” Harden told him. “People look at you like that all the time, and they always will.”

Ed came over and tried to push between them, but Harden had his arm around Street’s shoulders and Street was neatly tucked against him, not even minding the picture they made. Harden could remember being sixteen and fucking around with one of his tweaker friends, a skinny arm trying to snake around Harden’s waist on a public street and the quick instinctive jerk to get away, his elbow snapping back into the boy’s chest and the cracked rib that made it impossibly painful to smoke or snort speed for three weeks, and that’s when they’d learned to shoot up.

Harden couldn’t think of anything in his life that was the same now as it had been then.

“It wasn’t like I minded,” Street said, absently petting Ed, tangling his fingers. “I thought I should mind, I kept thinking that it should bug me, but it didn’t.”

“Yeah, well. That’s repression for you.”

Street tocked their heads together, making an offended noise. “I wasn’t repressed. I was. Confused.”

“Whatever you say.” Harden smiled and bit at Street’s neck, Street squirming under his arm. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“Well,” Street breathed. “I think I’ve recovered.” He put his hand on Harden’s knee, tapping his thumb thoughtfully. “You know what we should do tonight?”

“Got a couple of ideas.”

“We should go to your place. I’ve never even been to your place. And no parents, right? It’ll be perfect. We can—” Street stopped, abruptly realizing that Harden had gone tense. “Um. Is that not okay?”

Harden flashed briefly on his crummy little apartment, Zito’s mattress on the floor of the kitchen, the stains on the walls and the cracks in the ceiling, bare white plaster and used-up lighters providing the only slashes of color. He couldn’t take Street back there. How would he explain Street to Zito or Zito to Street, what if Mulder came by with a job or somebody hoping he had an extra gram to sell. What if Street saw him as he really was, not like he was in the rec room, after his true life was far behind him and he had the freedom to imagine that they were from the same world?

Harden sighed, and rolled his forehead on Street’s shoulder, closing his eyes. “Believe when I say that you wouldn’t want that.”

He felt Street’s breath, hesitant on his temple, Street’s fingers moving nervously on his knee. “Oh.” Street sounded confused, but there wasn’t a lot Harden could do about that.

“We’re all right,” Harden said, hearing a bit of desperation skew into his voice. “Right here, it’s all right, isn’t it?”

Street nodded, his chin bumping Harden’s head. “It’s good, Rich, don’t worry. We don’t have to go anywhere else.”

And Harden could taste the ocean in his mouth, the scratch of sand under his feet, the sun disappearing on his eyelids, silver and purple and cold as hell.

*

Mulder and Crosby were seen around town and somebody got the wrong idea. Mulder offered him to a regular who was looking for something new, and the regular smirked, said, “Thought he was off-limits.”

Mulder lifted his eyebrows, standing in the neon of a movie theatre with a line of people at his back. “Who the fuck told you that?”

The regular, some movie star’s gofer who’d fucked his way through most of Mulder’s boys and never had a complaint, shrugged. “Just heard. More than once, you know? That he’s not for sale.” His mouth turned up at the edges and made him look like a criminal.

Shaking his head, Mulder asked hard, “If he wasn’t for sale, why’d I just ask if you wanted to fuck him?”

The regular shrugged again. “Testing me? Fuck if I know. I don’t want to fuck with something that’s yours, maybe you won’t give me the sweet ones anymore.”

Mulder thought quickly, it was Crosby’s night off. He’d had a bunch of those recently, sleeping at Mulder’s place and leaving in the morning with his shirt on inside-out and the top button of his jeans undone. It didn’t mean anything, though; Mulder was having trouble putting together a client list for him, looking for guys who were rough and pretty mean, not mean enough to leave bruises on Crosby’s face but mean enough. Mulder still didn’t like the idea of Crosby enjoying the job, finding Mulder at Nicky’s with a white grin and a pad of money in his pocket.

“He’s mine and that means he fucks who I tell him to,” Mulder said, pushing his hands into his pockets. “And he’s sweet as anybody. So.”

The regular gave him a skeptical look, his pupils dilated, the whites reflecting the pink light. “Whatever you say, Johnny. Seen you two in the bars, that’s all. Seemed pretty fucking tight.”

“You don’t know shit. Fuck him or don’t, doesn’t fucking matter to me. He’ll fuck someone else, I’ll get paid either way.” Mulder made fists in his pockets, thinking that he could find a million guys who’d want to fuck Crosby, he didn’t have to listen to this jackass.

“You’re asking an awful lot for him, too,” the regular pointed out, his mouth still wrenched, begging to be flattened by a punch.

“He’s fucking worth it. I mean, excuse the fuck out of me, but have you seen him? Nobody’s bitched about the price before.”

“No discount for a steady customer?” the regular asked with a leer.

“Sure as fuck not gonna give you one after this bullshit,” Mulder told him.

“Whatever. I’ll let you know, all right?”

“Whatever,” Mulder muttered, glaring at the man’s back. “Irritating prick.” He scratched his hands over his hair, digging his thumbnail into the base of his skull hard enough to make his eyes tear. Then he walked the fifteen blocks home, found Crosby sitting on the steps, playing a first-generation Gameboy with masking tape holding the batteries down.

Mulder still wouldn’t let Crosby hang out at his place alone, though he was beginning to forget the rationale behind that. He said Crosby’s name and Crosby looked up, smiled.

“Hey, man,” Crosby said happily, and stood up, put his hand on Mulder’s stomach and tried to kiss him. Mulder dodged it, faking a cough. He let them in and Crosby toed off his shoes, tossed his jacket over the back of the couch. He got himself a beer and thumped down on the couch, his feet on the coffee table.

“You find me a job for tonight?”

Mulder was standing in the doorway, still holding his keys, little metal teeth snagging on his fingers. “No.”

“Dude, come on!” Crosby said, half-exasperated. “It’s been like,” he rattled his fingers on his knee, “four days or something. I gotta eat.”

Mulder shot him a look, because Crosby ate most of his meals here. Mulder was buying Cinnamon Life cereal and microwave pizzas without even thinking about it. He really wished Crosby would stop being so good at this.

“All the guys are assholes this week.” He came over and sat down next to Crosby. Crosby was wearing one of the shirts Mulder had bought for him, this soft green thing that traced his arms like charcoal.

“I don’t care, man. Assholes I can deal with. Broke as a joke, can’t deal with that.” He nudged Mulder, his teeth flashing.

“How can you be broke, Bobby, you’ve got no fucking expenses.”

Crosby moved his shoulders, grinning. “Maybe I picked up a nasty little drug habit while you weren’t paying attention.”

Mulder thought of Harden, his fingers like pencils and his ribs styrofoam-brittle under Mulder’s hands. The time last winter, when Harden had crashed in the parking lot of the Circle-K and Zito had lifted him up in his arms, blinking at Mulder, saying hoarsely, “there’s nothing to him.”

Mulder shook his head. “I think I’d kinda notice. You’re, like, a picture of health.”

“That’s right. I’m in my prime. I could fuck five guys a night and we could make out like fucking bandits, you know?” Crosby’s eyes were shining, penthouse views and the Caribbean visible in his expression.

Mulder put his hand on Crosby’s knee. “I’m working on it, okay? Be rich soon enough.”

Crosby snickered and sidled into him, pressing his face against Mulder’s neck. Mulder could feel his teeth and the swipe of his tongue, hot just below his ear. Crosby mumbled something, “wanna be rich now, Mark,” but his hand was fumbling at Mulder’s belt and Mulder kinda lost track.

*

Zito went down to the pay phone at the gas station to call Danny Haren, because Haren had said something about pushing their weekly appointment earlier, his baseball team was going to Hawaii for some tournament. Haren’s voicemail message was unintelligible, punctuated by high-pitched giggling and someone in the background shouting along to a punk song.

When he got back to their apartment, there was a kid pacing around out front, his hands flying like birds. Zito got closer and saw that the kid had been badly beaten, one side of his face stained like a sunset, his eye swollen shut, his lip split by a dark line of blood. It was fucking creepy, because the other side was as perfect as a sculpture.

“Hey, um, excuse me, hey?” the kid said, catching sight of him. His voice was all torn up, and his good eye gleamed at Zito like a piece of quartz in the sidewalk. “Do you know Rich?”

Zito stopped. The kid was shaking. “Who the fuck are you?”

The kid tried to bite his lip, wincing and making a choked sound. “I, I’m a friend. Please, do you know him? I know he lives here, I need to see him.”

Zito studied him, thinking that Richie was pretty goddamn stupid to be fucking around with a guy who couldn’t be more than sixteen years old. Mulder only liked them to break one law at a time. Harden must have found this one freelance, which was another thing Mulder forbade.

“How do you know he lives here?” it occurred to him to ask, because rule number one was no real names and no addresses.

The kid blinked fast with his one eye. He had asphalt burn on his cheek and his lip was starting to bleed again.

“Um, I followed him this one time. Just because I wanted to see, because he, he wouldn’t take me here and I just.” He shook his head, half-moaning. “Listen, what does it matter. Could you just please, could you take me to him please? I really need to see him.”

Zito crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall, ticking his eyebrows up. “What, is he the one responsible for your face?”

The kid blanched. “No, jeez. No, he’s, um, he’s. My boyfriend.” The kid somehow blushed through the bruises, staring furiously at his feet.

Zito’s eyes went wide. “Your _what_?”

The kid put his hands over his face, his shoulders trembling. “I’m gay,” he said tonelessly.

Zito shook his head, feeling his blood rasp painfully in his veins. “Good for you. What the fuck are you talking about?”

The kid glanced up at him, looking purely terrified, and Zito realized that he’d taken a step forward, looming over him. “Don’t, please. I already got beat up once today for this, so please, please don’t.”

Zito forced his face to relax, managed a cold little smile. “Look, obviously you’re mistaken or something. Don’t worry, I’m sure it happens to a lot of guys. But whatever Richie told you, it probably had more to do with the money, okay?”

The kid’s brow furrowed, and he winced again, licking blood off his lips. “What money?”

Zito jammed his thumbs into the insides of his elbows, because this was completely impossible. The kid still looked scared, shifting from foot to foot. Zito wondered if his chest and stomach were bruised too, if there was the same sunset over his ribs.

“The money you pay him to fuck,” Zito said slowly, and watched in astonishment as shock sprang across the kid’s face, literally pushing him backwards, tripping on the cement.

“W-what?” he stuttered.

Zito ran a hand through his hair, pulling hard. “Yeah, I don’t think you’re his boyfriend, dude,” _because that’s out of the fucking question_ , “you don’t even know him.”

The kid’s eye narrowed, his mouth tightening and making the blood come bright red and sharp as a toothpick. “I know all about him. Everything.”

“Yeah right,” Zito said, rolling his eyes. He wanted to get this kid out of here. Go find Harden and put him through a wall for letting a fucking just-out tagalong high schooler get within shouting distance of them. The kid wouldn’t ruin them but his parents sure as fuck would, and Harden was supposed to be smarter than this.

“Everything,” the kid insisted, his voice cracking. “I know that he’s from Canada, and he likes to play MarioKart better than Super Mario World, and he likes the sweet kind of popcorn and Dr. Pepper but not Mr. Pibb, and his hair always sticks up in the back when he wakes up, and he thinks he looks good in red shirts but really he looks better in blue, and he doesn’t have a wallet, and he rubs his eye with his fist when he yawns, and he loves Animal Planet even though he pretends he doesn’t, and he’d sleep on the beach every night if he could and Rich isn’t his real first name, it’s James, okay, _James_.”

The kid was weeping by the end of it, blood on his chin and his hands clenched into fists.

Zito tried to pretend it was just static.

“I know him,” the kid repeated, his shoulders collapsing inwards.

Zito thought of the past two months, the long nights when Harden had never come home, the constant smile on his face and the clarity of his veins. Zito had given up everything for him, and Harden had disappeared.

Zito bit the insides of his cheeks and did what he could to protect what he loved. “Yeah? Did you know he fucks guys for money? Did you know he’s spent the past five years so fucking addicted to crystal meth that he probably doesn’t even remember what it’s like to really sleep? He’s a hustler and a drug addict, man, he’s not your fucking boyfriend.”

The kid stared at him, wet-eyed and stunned, and Zito could see the refusal jag across his face, could see him drive his teeth into his broken lip, pain like an electric charge. “You’re lying,” he whispered.

“No,” Zito said, feeling like he was outside his body and watching this all in slow-motion. “He’s all the things you were ever warned about. So why don’t you run on home. Ice your fucking face and think up a good story to tell mommy and daddy.”

The kid ripped his head to the side, pressing his palm against his good eye. Blood fell onto the sidewalk, and the kid was sobbing as he turned away. He stumbled on the cement, his head bowed, and then started to run, though he had to be blind. The sound of his breath, ragged and broken, echoed in the street until he was around the corner and had vanished.

Zito’s legs gave out, and he fell against the wall, breathing hard. He was suddenly weak, dime-colored stars in his eyes.

*

Harden only had about ten minutes to shower and change, and then he had to get over to Street’s house. It had been the first day of school. Street hadn’t wanted him to leave the night before, kept kissing him and holding him down with a hand on his chest, Harden’s head bent uncomfortably against the arm of the couch.

Harden kept saying, “you’ll be fine, look at you. One more year and then free forever, right?”

Street had gripped his arms and put his forehead down on Harden’s chest. “I’m just totally different now,” he’d said quietly, and Harden had kissed the top of his head, told him, “Nobody has to know that.”

Now he had ten minutes and then he’d see Street and they'd go to the coffeeshop or something. Street said something about maybe hanging out with his friends, but Harden had killed that real quick. One frighteningly pretty high school boy was more than enough for him.

He hurried into their apartment and pulled off his shirt, thinking ahead to Street smiling as white as the paper in his new notebooks, the stiff jeans that he hadn’t had time to break in yet.

Zito said, “hey, Richie?”

Harden called hi, tossing his shirt in the corner where he let dirty clothes collect. “I’m not even here, man, I gotta get ready.”

“Wait, hang on.” Zito stood up from the table, too fast and the chair fell over with a clatter. Zito jumped at the noise. “Can we talk for a second?”

Harden glanced at his wrist and then remembered that he didn’t wear a watch anymore. He scratched his bare stomach and said, “Yeah, of course. I gotta head out, though, so, you know.”

“No, yeah, it’s cool.” Zito cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Look, um. I just wanted to. Do you know what today is?”

Harden leaned in the doorway, grinning. “It’s the first day of school.”

Zito blinked, swallowed, and tried out a strange grin that didn’t fit on his face. Harden felt disquiet coiling low in his stomach.

“Yeah, okay. But, also? It’s been a year.” Zito spread his arms out, the grin clicking a little better into place.

Harden thought, but couldn’t remember. It had been two months since he’d met Huston Street, and thus necessarily two months that he’d been clean, but that wasn’t what Zito was talking about.

“A year since what?” he asked.

“Since I found you. I mean, since we met.” Zito’s eyes looked kinda crazy, lit up by giddiness. “Happy anniversary, dude.”

Harden faked, his head snagging to the side, smiling big. “Dude. Is that right?” He shook his head. “Christ.”

“I know.” Zito started to come for him, but then stopped halfway, his hands twitching nervously. Harden gave him a curious look and crossed the distance, hugging him, Zito’s forearms tense and starkly bare against the skin of his sides.

“I woulda been dead, you know?” Harden said, pushing his nose into Zito’s shoulder.

“I know,” Zito replied quietly, and Harden could feel Zito’s breath coming fast and thready on his temple. Harden pressed a hard kiss to Zito’s throat, and made as if to move back, but Zito’s arms stayed tight around him, staring down at him and there were shadows in his eyes. He’d chewed his lower lip ragged, and Harden lifted a hand, touched his fingertips to Zito’s mouth.

“Are you okay?” he asked, because he’d been caught up, barely paying attention.

Zito looked like he might cry, but he cleared his throat and let his arms fall, stepping away. “I’m cool,” he answered, shooting Harden a neat smile. “Look, I. I got you something. Not, like, a big deal or whatever, I just thought maybe. Because you’ve been really good recently and it’s been awesome living with you and I, um. I wanted to get you something, because I’m dumb like that.”

Zito made a little laugh, cutting his hand through the air. He wasn’t meeting Harden’s eyes.

Harden snaked an arm around his waist, hooking his hand in Zito’s jeans. “Sweetest fucking guy in the city, swear to god.”

Zito’s eyes stuck to Harden’s face for a minute and then shot away, gazing out the window. The kids were playing baseball across the street again, it was only a matter of time before something got broken.

Zito dug into his pocket and pulled out a gram bag, white-clear crystals sharded and winking in the melting sunlight. Harden’s mouth dropped slightly open, and he could feel his pupils telescoping hugely, could feel his pulse kick up a few notches.

“You got me a gram?” he said in disbelief, his arm around Zito’s waist starting to tremble.

Zito shrugged, sounding torn like confetti. “You’ve been clean for a really long time now, Richie. I figured maybe you were ready to go back to it. It’d be really good, after this long, huh?”

Harden nodded, speechless. “It’d be wonderful.”

Zito took his hand and pressed the gram into it, folding Harden’s fingers down. The crystal snapped, hard and sharp through the plastic. Harden was thinking that he needed a fresh set of razor blades and a new piece. A five-pack of Bic lighters in rainbow colors and a hand-mirror because his last one had gotten broken on the bus. Seven years bad luck, but it wouldn’t start tonight, tonight he had speed.

He glanced up at Zito, amazed, and Zito was keeping careful watch on him, gauging his reaction. “I thought you didn’t like me being on it.”

Zito shook his head, put his hand on the back of Harden’s neck. “You’re a good drug addict, Richie. You stay in control.”

Something black wicked through Zito’s eyes, and Harden thought maybe that was a lie, but if it was, why had Zito bought him a gram?

Harden hugged him tight around the waist, peering over Zito’s shoulder at the speed glinting in his hand. “Thank you, dude. Seriously.”

He felt Zito’s lips moving on his neck and his skin flushed. He pulled back, found Zito smiling down at him for real.

“I was thinking that you could have a taste and then we could go to the arcade or something,” Zito offered. There were few things Harden liked better than playing videogames while tweaked, but he suddenly remembered Street sitting cross-legged on the carpet, rattling his thumbs on the controller, twisting his shoulders and bumping Harden as he guided Luigi around the course.

“Fuck. I’ve actually got somewhere to be,” Harden said, his forehead lining. He thought of the bathroom in Street’s rec room, which he’d cased out of habit his first day there, noting that the door locked and the counter was flat and marbled, perfect for laying down lines. He licked his lips, thinking of sucking Street off with every sense heightened. Street had no idea what he was in for.

Zito’s jaw tightened, but he played it off with an engaging smile. “We won’t be all night, man, just an hour or two. It’s our fucking anniversary.”

Harden grinned. Street would wait. It was a school night—he wasn’t allowed to go out. “All right, charming motherfucker, you’re on. I need to run to the drugstore, though. Supplies.”

Zito shrugged, his face a complicated mix of vindication and excitement and a crawl like guilt in the corners of his mouth. “I can still be the human mirror, if you want.”

Harden laughed, flipped the gram around his fingers. He was shuddering with eagerness, just like always. Even the three-blocks-away drugstore was too far to go, too long to wait. He pushed Zito down, Zito’s knees collapsing willingly as he sat on Harden’s mattress. The late-afternoon light drafted him all gold and floated dust motes into his hair.

Harden put the gram on the table and crushed the crystal up with the side of his lighter, not as fine as it would be once he got it out of the bag, but time was short and the first time back always hurt. Zito took off his shirt and Harden knew in a minute or two his eyes would be bright enough to see Zito’s heartbeat through his skin, his beautiful best friend who understood about addiction and wanted to take Harden to play videogames.

Zito laid himself out and Harden knelt on the bed beside him, the shadow of his head passing like a cloud over Zito’s face. He smoothed his hand down Zito’s chest and Zito’s breath hitched, but just once. Harden tapped out some speed into the trench between Zito’s ribs, nicely revealed to him as if it had no other purpose than this.

Harden rolled up a bus ticket and used it as a straw, gasping as the speed spiked into his sinuses. He licked the remnants off Zito’s chest and then licked him again, just for fun. Zito’s hand rested lightly in his hair and when Harden looked up, Zito’s head was tipped back, his eyes closed and his face at peace.

For a second, Harden loved him like nothing else, like the ocean or the air, something he could never in his life be without.

*

Mulder had to go out to Malibu for the night. His best client was an agent and there was some punk actor who played straight real well but still needed to fuck a guy every week or so if he didn’t want to go crazy. Mulder would dress nice and eat dinner with cloth napkins and afterwards they’d sit on the porch and Mulder would describe each of his boys in detail as the actor got absurdly stoned and made his decision.

Mulder had done this a number of times before. He could practically script the conversation.

He was getting dressed and Crosby was helpfully ironing his black silk shirt, blowing pink bubbles with his gum and making Mulder struggle to remember why it was important to make this meeting tonight.

“He’s famous, huh?” Crosby asked. There was steam rising up from his hands.

Mulder threaded his belt through the loops and shrugged. “Famous enough not to want to get caught blowing a guy in a backroom somewhere.”

“Is it, like, really bad etiquette to ask for an autograph in this situation?”

Mulder snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’d be pretty bad.”

“I’m just saying. Potentially, you could blackmail this guy for like a million dollars. Seems only polite to sign a fucking napkin or something.”

“I got a reputation, Bobby, you know? Credibility and shit.”

“Right, right.” Crosby grinned down at the shirt, running his thumb down the seams. “Long-term beats out the short-term, is what you’re saying.”

Mulder came over, swiping a hand through his wet hair and flicking it at the iron to hear the water hiss. He put his hand on Crosby’s hip and said, “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I got something he wants, but he’s got nothing I can’t get somewhere else. That’s how you win.”

Crosby tipped his head against Mulder’s shoulder. “You’re like a fucking psych textbook sometimes, you know that? Or, like, self-help. I’ma write it all down someday and make a mint.”

“Finish my shirt first, okay?” Mulder drummed his fingers on the hard bone of Crosby’s hip, smelling bubble gum and steam. He could feel the inertia of the apartment, the scuffed carpet under his feet and the dents in the bedroom wall from the headboard. He wondered idly if the movie star would want to fuck Crosby, and decided he’d have to send one of the other boys out first to get a good read on him.

“It’s done.” Mulder shrugged into it, warm and vaguely damp. Crosby did up the buttons, fixing the collar and leaving the throat open. Mulder steadied himself with both hands on Crosby’s waist, still absently wishing he could blow off the meeting.

He kissed Crosby quickly and said, “C’mon, I’ll drop you off at home.”

Crosby’s eyes darkened and he groaned dramatically, flopping on the couch. “Man, I don’t want to go back there tonight. My folks keep asking me all these really personal questions about where I am all the time.”

“Yeah, well,” Mulder rolled his eyes. “That’s what you get for still living with your fucking family.”

“I basically live here,” Crosby muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I’m tired. I wanna go to Denny’s with you in the morning. Can’t I just sleep here?” He gave Mulder his best smile, the one that sparked in his eyes and ran up Mulder’s arms like goosebumps.

Mulder tried to remember why he didn’t want Crosby to be in his apartment when he wasn’t, but then Crosby hasped his hands in Mulder’s belt and tugged him between his legs.

“I’ll send you off right,” Crosby promised with a dirty glint. “Good luck for the movie star and everything.”

He started opening Mulder’s belt, and Mulder rolled his head back, looked up at the ceiling, flaking plaster and yellowing stains in the corners. Crosby’s mouth alit on his stomach like a brand, his fingers deft finding the slit in the front of Mulder’s boxers.

“Don’t need luck,” Mulder said to the ceiling, but he was already sighing, palming Crosby’s head. He was gonna make Crosby grow his hair out, see what he looked like with a surfer shag, what it’d feel like to sink his hands in and twist a grip, guide Crosby by steady tug and stiff redirection.

“Yeah, you don’t need anything,” Crosby mumbled, and licked and bit and Mulder shivered, moving his hands to Crosby’s ears. “You got the world.”

Mulder laughed breathlessly. “Fuck, man, okay, you can stay. Be here when I get back and shit. Keep doing that.”

Crosby grinned up at him and returned to the task at hand. Mulder walked out fifteen minutes later feeling five-points brilliant, tossing off every piece of light that came his way.

The meeting went well. The movie star had trouble deciding, poring over the pictures on Mulder’s phone. Mulder got a little drunker than he’d intended, and slept for a few hours in a guest bedroom, woke up at dawn and drove home east on the Pacific Coast Highway with the sun filling his windshield all white and silver.

He stopped for coffee in Santa Monica and walked across the street to the beach. His shadow stretched fifteen feet long on the sand, rippled by the small footprinted dunes. The ocean was made of sugar and cobalt, fled like the highway as far as Mulder could see.

He felt remarkable. The caffeine sang in him and the sun warmed his back and they were going to Denny’s for breakfast and he couldn’t remember anything like this.

Mulder got home and the place was dark. He quietly took off his shoes and belt, lost the shirt in the hallway and pushed out of his pants as he came into the bedroom. He climbed into bed, and searched blindly, but it was immediately evident that Crosby wasn’t there.

Mulder turned the light on, and got up, confused. He figured maybe Crosby had taken the bus back home, although why he would have after making such a big deal about staying last night was beyond Mulder.

Then he saw the closet door, standing open. There were coats and scarves strewn out on the floor, and Mulder could see the silver handle of the safe shining, though the angle was wrong.

Mulder found himself on his knees in the closet without being aware that he’d moved. He tore the rest of the clothes out of the way and saw that his safe was standing open.

Open and empty.

It hadn’t been forced. The combination was the zip code of South Holland, Illinois, and only one man in the city might have guessed that. Only one man in the city had the whole night to sit on the floor of Mulder’s closet trying different numbers.

Mulder was dead still inside himself, watching with complete fascination as his hands reached out and gripped the safe, hard black metal under his palms and the oily smell of the hinges rising into his face. It was so fucking empty, a hole.

He started to break, his muscles jerking under his skin and a siren in his mind, reeling and staggering. He’d be insane in a moment, any moment now, and he slammed into action, ripping through the closet. Clothes whisked around him and rent in his hands. He moved through the bedroom, his head on fire, the sheets and blankets on the floor, then the bathroom, where he threw the medicine cabinet open and shattered the mirror and his hands were bleeding now, his face horrifying in the pieces of glass.

He was in the living room, half-bent and panting over the upturned couch, dust clotting in the gashes on his hands, and he finally stopped, fell to his knees, because he wasn’t looking for the money or some clue as to where Crosby had gone.

He was looking for a note. He was hoping that Crosby had at least said good-bye.

*

It was a day or maybe two before Harden got over to see Street. It felt like one long night, the red blasts of the arcade game and the bleating music so loud he could feel his eardrums vibrating. Zito was at his side, passing him bottles of water and cans of 7-Up. Zito was in the men’s room stall with him, a bump in the hollow of his thumb and Harden holding his wrist steady as he bent his head and closed off one nostril.

His mind had been strafed, scoured raw and he could feel everything in the tips of his fingers, the pound of his heart. Harden forgot why he’d stayed clean for so long, why it had seemed so important to deprive himself of this. And Zito didn’t care, Zito just wanted him around, his pockets heavy with quarters, his mouth screwed into a warped little smile.

But Harden wanted to see Street, wanted to put his hands all over Street and drink him in. He left when Zito finally fell asleep, took the bus because his heart wasn’t up for running, and it must have been late, he was the only one watching the lights rush past.

He knocked on the back door, soft raps of his knuckles. Street had pretty much moved into the rec room since they’d been fooling around, so that he could always be available to fit into Harden’s night.

But Street didn’t come to the door, so Harden snuck around the side of the house, ducking under Street’s parents’ bedroom window. Officially, Street shared a room with the eldest of his three brothers, but his bed was near the window, Harden knew, Harden could reach right in and touch Street’s face if the glass were slid open.

Harden looked down at him in the musty light of the streetlamp, through the glass, through the cellophane that speed taped down over his eyes. Street was curled up on his side, hugging the pillow tightly, his face tense and concerned. Harden wanted to brush his fingers through Street’s hair and calm him down. His heart was beating so fast.

Harden tapped his fingertips on the glass, steady rhythm, and eventually Street twitched and his eyes came open. Harden grinned, waving at him through the window. Street angled up and turned to look, and Harden saw the damage to his face, the jaundiced bruises around his eyes, the puffiness of his lower lip.

Harden gasped, pressing his hands flat on the glass. “Who did that?” he said in astonishment, his lips moving fishbowl-silent at Huston Street. “Are you okay?”

Street’s face wrenched and Harden stared as Street sneered at him, his busted lip curling up. Street mouthed something that Harden couldn’t make out, something harsh and cutting if the look on his face was any evidence, and then buried his head under the pillow.

Harden froze for a moment, the glass planishing the tips of his fingers, the wind riffing through his hair. The speed whirred in him, and he punched the side of the house, flat thwacking sound rising and Street’s head snatching up from under the pillow, looking at him with betrayal written all over his features.

Harden just stared at him, his mouth open.

Street got up on his knees and jerked the window open, glancing back over his shoulder at his brother sleeping fitfully with the blankets up to his chin.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Street hissed. “Get out of here, Rich, I don’t want to see you anymore.”

Harden reached out, tried to touch Harden’s face and smooth away the bruises, but Street ducked out of the way.

“Your face, Huston, what happened?” he managed.

Street shook his head, his lips pressed into a breakless line. “Not your concern. Just go away.”

“Wait,” Harden said, wondering frantically if this was an overdose dream, and maybe he was lying in a bathroom somewhere with Zito throwing people away from the payphone, kneeling next to him and clasping his hand. “I don’t, what, I don’t know what’s going on. Why are you mad at me?”

Street met his gaze for the first time and it blew Harden away, crash of anger and regret and fear and a million other things, not all of them that bad, but most.

Street’s brother coughed in his sleep, and Street threw a nervous look back at him, then muttered “lord,” like a curse, and hiked himself out of the window, standing barefoot and shivering in the wet grass of the yard.

“Don’t wake the whole house,” Street muttered, his head down, and led Harden to the sidewalk, stuck out like puppets in the orange streetlight. Harden’s hands ran and flew; he wanted to touch Street so badly he could feel it like a third-degree burn.

“What happened to your face, Huston?” Harden asked helplessly, his hand up and angling towards Street’s cheek, but Street pulled back again with a rough moan.

“Don’t, okay.” Street swallowed. “I just, I got beat up. At school. No big deal, it just happened.”

“Why?”

“These guys. Same guys as always. They rag on me, like, normal, okay. But then they called me a fag and I said, so what if I am, and they. They didn’t like that much.”

Street kept his eyes on the sidewalk, his shoulders frail in the sick light. Harden shook his head, miles-high and unable to keep his mouth shut.

“Jesus, man, you don’t tell the guys at your school. What the fuck were you thinking?”

Street shot him a hateful look and didn’t say anything. Harden forced himself to slow down.

“I’m sorry. So fucking sorry that happened to you, but, it’ll be okay. Makes you look tough.” Harden tried to smile; it didn’t work. Street’s shoulders kept curving in and in, turned him into a bird.

“I need you to go away now, Rich,” Street said, his voice scarred. “Need you to go away and not come back. Please.”

Harden was struck dumb, suddenly terribly aware of his hands hanging uselessly, his huge eyes soaking in the faded light. The wind rushed through the trees and sounded like the tide. He tried to remember, petrified, had he done something unforgivable while high?

“What?” he said, opening his hands palms-out to show that he held nothing and was no threat. Street pushed his hands into the pockets of his sweats and blinked fast, his eyes glimmering.

“I know, all right. I know everything.”

“What?” Harden said again, not sure that he’d ever be able to say anything else.

Street made an awful sound, knuckling away tears. “He told me. That you. What you do for a living. And why you do it. So you lied and you should leave. Because I don’t want to look at you.”

The brutal accuracy of speed showed him everything. He couldn’t be shut off from this, his mind whipping light-years ahead and his life charred behind him. The best secret he’d ever had, and here Harden was laid out like a broken window.

“Who?” he asked hoarsely, wanting names and faces, someone who could pay.

Street shook his head. “Somebody who knows you better than I do. I. I went to see you, yesterday, because. All I wanted was to see you. And I shouldn’t have followed you that time, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t help it. I needed you yesterday and I went to find you and you weren’t there but somebody else was and he told me. I can’t do this. You’re not what I thought.”

Pictures were crystallizing in Harden’s mind, a swift grin and fall-away brown hair, an anniversary present to keep him chained to the past.

“He was tall?” Harden wanted to know, and rage flowed up his arms and legs, pooled hotly in his chest. “Tall, good-looking, brown hair and eyes? Stupid fucking hemp necklace and shoes with red stripes on them? Looked like he might be a good guy until he opened his motherfucking mouth, _is that who told you_?”

Harden was almost screaming, and Street paled, sank back into the shadows of the trees. The thin gold chain looped over his shoulders and flickered as it disappeared into his shirt. It sounded like he was crying, and Harden’s hands were fisted so hard his nails drew blood on his palms.

“It doesn’t matter,” Street said, choking. “Don’t you get it, I feel like I’ve been shot.”

Harden snapped his head to the side and his jaw was throbbing. He was clenching his teeth and he could hear the enamel squeal. “You don’t understand,” Harden told him, wishing that Harden would come out of the dim light and show his beaten face again. “It doesn’t make me a bad person. It’s just something that happened.”

Street laughed, the worst thing Harden had ever heard. “You’re a drug addict? You’re, you’re a _prostitute_? You made me believe you were, like you ever could be, that you were this perfect—no. How could you do this to me? Do you even know. No. I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry but I can’t. Not with you. Because there was this time when you were, don’t you know what you were to me? And it wasn’t real.”

Harden moved like light and caught Street by the arms. Street sucked in a breath between his teeth and tried to yank free, but Harden had crystal meth and true love on his side and it made him strong.

“I fucked up, I was just a kid,” he said desperately. “There wasn’t anything you did when you were fifteen years old that you regret? So mine left me here and left me like this, and it doesn’t _mean_ anything. It’s not the only thing, just one thing.”

Street stared at him, frightening knowledge growing in his eyes. “Are you. You’re high right now.”

Harden released him like he was on fire, appropriately scalded. Street made that wrecked laugh again. “You want me to forgive you for being a drug addict while you’re on drugs?” Street asked in disbelief.

Harden snarled, leaves falling into his hair. “I didn’t ask you to forgive me. And I won’t, this isn’t about you. This is just the way it is. Live in the fucking world.”

Street was shaking his head again, his eyes shuddering as he stared at Harden. “No,” he whispered.

Harden’s blood cried out loud for more speed, enough to make this far away and inconsequential, and his body wracked briefly, his hands clawing at the back of his neck. He calmed down, long breaths, slow exhales. He focused on the sidewalk and his shoes, counting the cracks, imagining he could see the reflection of the moon in the silver of candy bar wrapper.

Harden had been shot (though only once, and mostly by accident), and Street didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You never would have known,” Harden said flatly. “I wouldn’t have told you and we woulda been okay.”

“Woulda been a lie,” Street said cleanly on the heels.

Harden looked up and met his eyes, shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he told him, and turned.

Ran.

*

Zito was asleep, curled up on his mattress of the kitchen floor. It had gotten oddly chilly, barely September and the wind picked up, so he’d borrowed a denim-blue sweatshirt of Harden’s, went to see Danny and that wasn’t as fun as it usually was. He played it off, though, stumbled home stoned as a sinner and collapsed into bed, only getting the sweatshirt half-off. He held it in his arms now, under his face, unwashed cotton and grass stains seeping into him.

He dreamt of snow on the ocean and Eric Chavez chopping wood in the park where they used to ride their bikes after school when they were kids, and Chavez’s arms were skinny and bare the way he used to spend summers. Chavez grinned at him with sawdust in his hair and black marks under his eyes, and Zito was barely awake, rising blurrily and wondering what had stirred him, shoeprints moving quickly across the linoleum, and then Harden was upon him.

Fell on him like a storm, cursing and his hands swinging. He bloodied Zito’s nose and Zito’s arms were trapped by the sweatshirt. Harden punched him in the forehead and Zito’s vision blasted with stars.

Harden was saying, “you son of a bitch you told him you fucking piece of shit how could you do that to me.” Over and over again.

Zito lurched up and tore one arm free from the sweatshirt. He got a leg hooked around Harden’s body and spun in the air, flipping the two of them and they landed in a gasp with Zito on top, Zito fighting for purchase of Harden’s fists, begging him to stop.

Harden howled, tried to crack his forehead into Zito’s face, but just glanced off his cheek. Harden was running on pure adrenaline, cancerous strength in his arms though it’d been two days since he’d slept. His face was flushed bright red, his eyes blazing.

“Wait,” Zito panted, blood curving around his lips into his mouth. “Wait just wait, man, slow down.”

“You _told_ him,” Harden spat, and his wrists were in Zito’s hands, pinned to the mattress. Zito’s knees were digging into his sides. “You did it on purpose.”

Zito couldn’t believe it. “You care?” he asked.

“Yes I care!” Harden half-screamed. “He told me not to come back, it’s your fault, all your fault.”

Zito shook his head roughly. “I didn’t think. I thought he was just, some, some fucking kid who got too attached.”

“I wanted him attached.” Harden slumped back, his muscles cut, and he was burring, speedspeedspeeding under Zito.

“Who was he? I didn’t know him, I didn’t think you knew anybody that I didn’t,” Zito said, scrambled for some high ground to stand on.

Harden thrashed his head to the side. “I have a fucking life outside of you and he’s it.”

Zito started to get angry, his grip tightening on Harden’s wrists, because he’d done what was right. He’d told the truth and saved them both. “Yeah, real nice life. He didn’t know you and then when he did, he didn’t want you anymore. Big fucking loss.”

Harden hissed, and bucked up, almost throwing Zito off, his hipbones leaving sharp aching points of impact. “He didn’t need to know the bad stuff. And you, you didn’t have to make me bad again to scare him off.” He bared his teeth. “You gave me that gram because you knew I’d fuck it up if I was tweaked.”

“Oh yeah, nice job holding out,” Zito sneered, feeling the flood of Harden’s pulse under his fingers. “If you knew you’d fuck it up, why didn’t you turn it down?”

“Because I’m fucking addicted!” and Harden was screaming now, his voice shredded. “Because you don’t turn things down when you’re fucking addicted to them!”

“Your fault, then,” Zito said hoarsely.

“Fuck you!” Harden pulled so hard Zito could feel his bones squealing. Harden would break his own arms before letting Zito bury his face in Harden’s throat. “I could have kept it a secret. I always have.”

Zito’s mind whickered, pale and unsteady as a candle. “You never had to keep it a secret from me. I know and I don’t care, I want you anyway.”

Zito stopped and Harden stopped and they looked at each other in shock for a moment.

“Fuckin’ truth finally comes out, huh,” Harden said eventually, gnarled smile on his face.

Zito shook his head. “Not like that,” he protested, aware of their position and his legs straddling Harden and his hands holding him down. A million different times that this had been reenacted, though usually it was Zito on the bottom. “You’re my friend, I was protecting you. Because he was gonna destroy us, too fucking young, didn’t understand anything. Gonna break down to his fucking guidance counselor or something, and then you’d get arrested and so? So? You wanted that to happen?”

“You don’t _know_ him,” Harden said. “He’s not like that and it wouldn’t have happened. I don’t need you to fucking protect me. Just. Stay the fuck out of my life.”

Zito let him go, rolled and fell away onto the kitchen floor, where it was cold and dirty and the refrigerator crackled and hummed. Harden sat up, into the dim light of the streetlamp through the window, and Zito focused on his wrists, sickly imagining that he could see the bruises darkening.

“I’m not sure if you realize. What I gave up for you,” Zito said slowly. “Because you’re right, you would have been dead or even worse, but I stuck around. I didn’t leave even though I could have, because you wouldn’t be okay on your own.”

Harden was staring at him with such unreal hatred in his face that Zito felt like he’d been punched in the chest. “Who the fuck asked you? I was on my own for two years before you found me.”

“I found you passed out in a bus station. You had nowhere to go, no one. Breaking into houses. Stealing watches. You. You didn’t even have a coat.”

“It doesn’t get cold down here.”

Zito put his head in his hands, is it really possible that they’re arguing about the weather?

“I could have gone home,” he whispered. “You know? I could have gone back and maybe it would have been the same or better, and I can’t even imagine it being better, but maybe. My. My dad’s dying.” He swallowed, fisting his hands in his hair. This didn’t have anything to do with anything. “I stayed here because you were here.”

The linoleum was cracked and grimy and Zito could see the crushed-up cereal dusted yellow. Harden popped his knuckles, rustled on the mattress.

“You don’t get to fuck up my life so that we’ll be the same,” Harden told him coldly. “And I hate you, man, I really do.”

Zito pulled his legs up, bent them against his chest, hugged them hard and hid his face in his knees. He wished Harden would touch his hair, his neck. He wished they could go back and he could find Harden again and put his coat over him, wet a paper towel at the sink and clean Harden’s face as the ambulance lights wheeled into them.

“I’m leaving now,” Harden said, and he stood, tap-tap of his shoes. He stood over Zito with their feet touching and opened the freezer, took the money in there and Zito knew it would be everything they had. Fair recompense for damage done. Zito wanted to get up and stop him, pin him down again, at least take his half, but he couldn’t move.

Harden’s steps halted at the doorway, and Zito could picture him pausing, turning to look back. Harden had always made a brilliant exit. “He's so fucking good, man. He isn't like us. He didn’t deserve this.”

And Harden walked out, and Zito tried to figure that out, what hadn’t the kid deserved, the truth or the heartbreak, or did it matter, was there a difference, and then the panic crashed in on him like a building imploding, and he flung himself to his feet, tore through the door and into the hallway, four flights down and the street careening, Rich Harden already out of sight.

*

Mulder could not get drunk. He’d put away the better part of a bottle of gin and his mouth tasted slick and lemon-limed, but his mind was crystallized. Broke in every possible way.

He’d gone out to Oakton before nightfall, to the house he’d taken Crosby away from, but the couple that lived there was far too young to be Crosby’s parents, and they shook their heads, frowned at him. No, they didn’t know him. Thought he was a student. Showed up at the beginning of the summer, never paid his rent on time, skipped out owing them fifteen hundred dollars.

No, his name wasn’t Bobby. Tom, he’d called himself Tom.

Mulder didn’t know what to do. He drove around, scanning the streets, two thermoses in the shotgun seat, one of coffee and one of liquor, and the splintered neon was making him crazy. None of the bartenders had seen him, none of the diner’s waitresses. Half the people Mulder asked couldn’t even remember him, just another of Mulder’s boys and no more consequential than that.

Someone was banging on Mulder’s door, hollering his name. Mulder was sitting on the floor with his back against the still-overturned couch, the gin on the coffee table, the television black. Drink until he fell asleep. Wake up and look until it was time to drink again.

Mark-mark-mark and Mulder could hear Crosby asking him if that was his real name. Couldn’t stop wondering what Crosby’s real name was.

The door was unlocked, because maybe Crosby would change his mind, or be stricken with guilt, or miss him, or something equally impossible, and Mulder wanted to believe that any second now Crosby would just walk in unannounced, smiling and thumping down on the couch, his legs falling around Mulder’s shoulders, his hand on Mulder’s head.

The door was open, and Zito realized that after awhile, came falling in. Mulder gave him a cursory glance and Zito didn’t look too good. Looked pretty fucking wrecked, matter of fact, blood caked on his face and his nose swollen, and Mulder was meanly glad that at least he wasn’t the only one.

“Mark,” Zito said breathlessly, not seeming to notice that Mulder was drinking alone on the floor and that the apartment was in total disarray. “I need to borrow your car. And some money. Please.”

Mulder gestured with the bottle of gin. “Look at this. Can you believe this?”

Zito gave him an uncomprehending look. “What?”

“Fucking cocksucker, and he left, he took _everything_.”

Zito blinked, his mouth dropping open in perfect surprise. “Richie was here?”

Mulder tipped his head back onto the couch and regarded Zito blearily. Zito was always better-looking, Mulder had never told him but Zito made more money for him than any of his other boys. Zito had the most regulars, he got under their skin and they couldn’t shake him.

“No. I was. Was I supposed to see him tonight?” Mulder can’t remember, it was all a very long time ago.

“I fucked up,” Zito told him, and he was eyeing the gin like it was a boy with money falling out of his pockets.

“What, you tried to fuck him?” Mulder asked, snickering, happy to be dealing with Zito and Zito’s fucking idiotic problems for a minute. “I coulda told you, man, he strings you along, it’s his favorite hobby.”

Zito shuddered, his head tilting down and to the side, his mouth a scar. “He ran away.”

Mulder sat up, almost spilled the gin but caught it at the last moment. “He what?”

Zito’s hands moved frantically, drawing pictures. “I did something stupid and he ran away and he’s tweaking again and we have to find him, okay. I have to tell him I didn’t mean it.”

“What’d you do?”

Zito glared at him as if it weren’t an utterly logical question. “I didn’t try to fuck him, goddamn it. I’ve told you a million times, it’s not like that.”

“Yeah, not for him,” Mulder muttered, and attempted to focus. “He’ll come back. He’s just high. He’ll come down and come home.”

Zito moaned. “No, he won’t, he’ll never. I’ve got to find him. I can explain it better if I just.” He jerked at his hair, hard enough that Mulder winced. “Can I borrow your car? Hundred dollars or so, just for gas and stuff. I might be gone for a little while but I’ll make it up to you when I get back, I swear I will.”

Mulder took a drink and thought abstractly that Zito appeared to be pretty fucking gone at the moment. There was a demolished radio by his feet, cassette tapes unspooled in lakes of shiny brown, but Zito hadn’t noticed that, nor the upside-down couch or the clatter of random plastic things that Mulder had swept off the shelves at some point.

“Can’t do it, man,” he said, his head finally starting to buzz. “I need it.”

“I need it more, motherfucker,” Zito answered hotly, forgetting who he was talking to. “Are you fucking deaf? He _left_ , he’s _gone_ , I have to get him back.”

And Mulder’s arm moved without his mind being aware, the bottle of gin cartwheeling and silver liquor spraying out, and the bottle exploded against the wall, leaving a dent like a fist and a pool spreading in the shatter of glass.

“He’s not the only one,” Mulder said quietly.

Zito stared at him, his mouth moving fish-like. “Bobby?” he managed.

Mulder nodded, feeling unacceptably weary. “Bad idea, turns out.”

“Fuck.” Zito paced, his eyes scanning the wreck of the room. “Fuck, Mark, what are we gonna do.”

Mulder wanted his gin back. Everything was unbearable and Zito was talking so loud. “I can’t. Would you get out of here? I can’t talk to you right now. You can’t take my car.” He wondered if things would be different if he’d ever fucked Zito. If he would be able to care about Harden or the madness in Zito’s eyes.

Zito’s face closed up, red turning black on his upper lip. “I need some money. I’ll make it on my own and fuck you. We’re fucking through, okay, I’ll do it alone.”

Mulder waved his hand, something thick choking him. “I don’t care. Get the fuck out.”

Zito was at the door and Mulder thought of one more thing, called his name and stopped him. Zito turned, his head held tense and fearful, and Mulder said, “If, if you see him. Send him back to me, okay?”

Zito hesitated, then nodded. “And if you see mine.”

Mulder nodded back, and then Zito left and Mulder was alone again, staring at the hollow eye of the television set.

*

Zito cleaned his face in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant and went to Far Bar. He’d always had luck there. He figured, two hundred dollars to rent a car and pay for gas. A long night ahead of him and he didn’t know where he’d start to look for Harden. Kept picturing empty sidewalks and the palm trees pasted to the blue sky, the sun going down earlier each day.

Zito ordered water at the bar and ignored the bartender’s look, taking a seat and feeling his mind switch audibly to work-mode, scanning for tricks in the corners. He appreciated this brief respite to do what he did best, though his whole body clamored for the streets.

He tried out a few smiles at the men drinking alone, wondering what day of the week it was. Nobody took him up on it, and Zito thought that maybe Harden had fucked up his face worse than had showed in the mirror.

An hour passed, maybe two, and Zito wanted to get out of there. He wanted to track down the kid, Harden’s boy with the bruises on his face, turn back time. Return to sixteen years old and be in love with Eric Chavez and convinced at last that he wasn’t going to be abandoned, swim with hard strokes into the ocean, salt burning in his eyes.

A man came in, tough in the carry of his shoulders and the shadow across his jaw. His hair was cut close, buzzed around his ears, and Zito carefully took in the leather jacket, the fit jeans, the tan line of a lost wedding ring. Just his type.

The man took a seat two stools down from Zito and sipped at Jack and Coke, watching the Dodger game on the television above the bar. Zito waited until he glanced over, and showed him a hesitant smile. The man smirked at him, rattling his fingers on the bar, and looked back up at the game.

“Hey,” Zito said in a low voice. The man glanced at him again. “Good game, huh?”

The man’s mouth curled and he was handsome in a redneck sort of way. “They’re losing by nine runs.”

Zito blinked at the television, blue and white and green, men in black roaming the lines. He’d never really understood baseball.

“I meant, like, it’s good that there’s a game. Something to watch.” He smiled innocently, saw interest flit across the man’s face.

The man considered him for a moment, then asked, “What the fuck happened to your face, kid?”

Zito flinched, his hand rising to cover his nose. “I got hit,” he mumbled.

“Gathered that much.” The man’s teeth nipped white as he grinned. “Better story behind it than that, though, right?”

Zito shifted his shoulders, drank his water and wished it was vodka. “I did something stupid. I, I had a friend, he made sure I knew it.”

“Never real friends until you get into a fight,” the man drawled, and Zito thought, Tennessee maybe, Georgia. He hoped that was true, that he’d find Harden and they’d repair together and come out stronger on the other side.

The man moved so that he was sitting next to Zito, offered him his hand. “My name’s Tim.” The tail of a baroque black tattoo peeked out from his sleeve, caught sweetly against the silver of his watch.

Zito shook his hand, a green light in his mind, scrolling through names. “Justin.”

“Justin, you look like you’ve had a rough night,” the man said. Zito stared at the scarred bar and nodded.

“Rough life,” he muttered, curled his hands around his glass and the condensation slipped on his palms.

“Think I can believe that,” Tim said, and Zito caught a calculating look in his eyes before his mouth thinned and he turned his attention back to the television. Zito followed his gaze and tried to figure out whether things were getting better or worse for the team.

They were quiet for a minute, but Zito didn’t want him getting away, because the leather jacket was expensive and he wasn’t remotely bad-looking and Harden was out there somewhere with a needle in his arm.

“What’s your accent?” Zito asked.

“Alabama.”

“Really?” Tim nodded, his eyes slate-colored. “Cool. That’s like. As Southern as it gets.”

Tim half-laughed, shaking his head. “Pretty much.”

“So how come you’re here?” Zito didn’t think that you were allowed to leave places like Alabama, he had this image in his mind of Spanish moss and towns where you could stand at one end and see the other, brown dust like the roads outside of San Diego in the dry season.

“California? L.A.? This bar?” Tim’s eyebrows quirked nicely and Zito would care more if he didn’t have six hundred more important things on his mind.

“Um. All of the above?” He let his elbow angle to brush Tim’s, and Tim stilled but didn’t move. Zito grinned on the inside, almost, almost.

Shrugging, Tim answered, “Followed someone out here and then that went to hell. Common enough, right? Got a job so I stuck around. In this bar, well, just here to enjoy the company.”

Tim’s smile got harsh and inviting, and Zito mirrored it, angled his head towards the back of the bar. Tim gave him a look of challenge, and Zito got up, went to the bathroom with the weight of eyes on his back, the knowledge that Tim would follow.

One room with a busted lock and a fluorescent light that stuttered on and off, and they faced each other, Tim leaning back against the door. Zito put his hands up beside Tim’s body and asked, “You know what I am?”

Tim lowered his chin a bit and shadows clung to the undersides of his eyes. “Tell me.”

Zito’s hand flattened on Tim’s chest, leather against his wrist and worn cotton, hard and hot as hell. “Suck you off for fifty. Fuck for a hundred. Don’t like the bathroom, I can show you something just fucking lovely in the range of three hundred dollars a night.”

Zito’s smile felt like a laceration and his nose hurt, but Tim laughed, all low and raspy, even that was accented, and said, “Why don’t we start at the beginning and see how we’re feeling, hmm?”

His hand pressed on Zito’s shoulder and Zito’s legs folded. Fierce cement floor under his kneecaps and graffiti scrawled alongside Tim’s hips. Zito looked up at him, penitent, and only had to cock his eyebrow for Tim to roll his eyes and pull his wallet out, a flash of gray-green and fifty dollars passed into Zito’s hand, disappearing into his sock.

Zito gave him the very best grin he had, opened his jeans and pushed up his shirt, mouthed Tim’s stomach to pass the time as his hands went to work. Tim’s hands went straight into his hair, and Zito swiveled so that he’d tug a little bit.

He was confused, the trace of Harden’s hips somewhere in his mind’s eye and a man shouting outside, car backfires like popcorn. The window was cracked open and still the mirror fogged at the bottom edges. Zito read the graffiti over and over again, nothing was spelled right and the proportions were all fucked up. He could taste iron and belt-leather. His nose bumped Tim’s body and sent shockwaves of pain through his head.

Tim had nice even nails, and they bit into Zito’s skull, which wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him today. He made good noises, flat breathless moans and skidded gasps. Zito thought of tire tracks on asphalt and the cold spot where Tim’s belt buckle was resting on his shoulder. It didn’t take too long.

Zito sat back on his heels and wished he’d brought his water in with him. Tim, his back to the door, caught his breath for a while, slowly fixing his jeans and smoothing his shirt down. The pale strip around his finger, where his wedding ring was not, stood out cleanly against the washed red of his shirt.

He smirked tiredly down at Zito, Zito humming and waiting for the next order. “You remember how you’ve had a rough day, kid?” Tim said, and Zito regarded him cautiously, nodded.

Tim chuckled, pivoting his shoulders to make his spine crack, reaching for the inside pocket of his jacket. “It’s about to get a whole lot worse.”

Zito’s eyes went huge and he held up his hands, “no, please,” but it was too late and Tim was showing him a shiny gold badge, saying with an awful smile:

“You’re under arrest for prostitution.”

Zito would have fought, thrown him against the mirror and fractured the bones in his hands, but the floor had crippled him and there was nowhere he could think to run, anyway.

*

Finding himself sunstroked on the sidewalk in front of Huston Street’s high school, for the third day in a row, Harden made the best of it. Sweat flecked his shirt and hung densely in his hair; he hadn’t slept in four days.

The high school was wide-open, built low to the ground to protect from earthquakes, and Harden didn’t know the direction in which Street would leave, had waited in the parking lot the first day, opposite the gym the second, memorizing the faces. Now he had his hands hooked in the chain-link and the kids ran like water, their colors stinging bright.

The fence rattled and Harden kept thinking in stupid whorls, ‘cyclone, cyclone. hurricane. fault line like a suture, all fall down.’ His mouth felt coated in dryer sheets, sticky and dry.

He spotted Street’s alloyed hair in the bobbing mess of heads, the tight protective draw of his shoulders. It was weird to see Street with a backpack on, his thumbs hooked in the straps. Harden had never finished high school, fleeing the country with his drug dealer a few weeks shy of graduation, knocking down trees and mailboxes in the Pacific Northwest. There were fresh bruises on Street’s face, painted over the yellowing ones from four days ago.

Pressure in Harden’s chest, just the sight of him, and four days awake meant rose-colored eyes, the insides of his cheeks chewed raw. Harden hadn’t been back to his apartment, hadn’t needed to find a place to spend his nights, because there were always diners and movie theatres and nightclubs. He climbed fire escapes and paced the length of the shore for miles, thinking up ways to talk Street into taking him back.

Just the sight of him.

Street saw him and a wounded look snatched across his face. He turned abruptly on his heel and Harden pushed through the crowd of kids, moving against the tide to grab hold of Street’s backpack, pull him to a stop under a stand of red-orange trees.

“Don’t,” Harden said, the word wanting to stutter on his tongue. There was a lighter-callus on his thumb and he couldn’t stop worrying it with his fingernail.

“Let me go,” Street told him softly. Harden could see a piece of blue-lined notebook paper sticking out of his backpack, ‘Western Civilization’ and the date written in black ink at the top, and Harden thought it was strange that he could feel like this when he didn’t even recognize Street’s handwriting.

“Can’t.” Harden turned Street halfway and placed his fingertips against the dull bruise around his eye, Street wincing and staring off. “You. You’ve got to stop telling people you’re gay.”

“You think I care?” Street asked emotionlessly.

“Don’t wanna see you like this.”

“Then leave.” Street put his hand on Harden’s chest and pushed, equal and opposite and Harden swayed back towards him, his fist clenched in the canvas of Street’s backpack. Kids flowed around them and some glanced at them sideways and maybe Street would get beaten up again tomorrow because Harden had held on like this, begged Street with his eyes.

Street glanced at him, paused, looked back for a moment longer. “Rich, what’ve you.” He swallowed. “God, you look like you’ve been hit by a train.”

Harden shrugged, it didn’t matter, it was day four and Zito’s gram was almost gone. Harden had money for more, could stay high for months until the world was flood-lit and post-apocalyptic.

He couldn’t stop remembering Street gripping the back of his head and craning his neck, the wet-dark breath of his open mouth and Street saying his name, Street pulling him down so that Harden’s face was pressed against his throat and Street was grinning, yawning into his forehead. He wondered what it meant to be this gone on someone when they’d never even gotten beyond blowjobs in the rec room with the videogame paused.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Harden said, speaking deliberately because all he could think about was licking Street’s jaw.

The tendon of Street’s shoulder went taut, shapes of leaves on his face, the school quieting. “We already did that.”

“No, you, you didn’t listen.”

Street met his eyes sharply. “I did too. I heard everything, it was just, it was a bunch of really bad excuses.”

Harden pressed his thumb on the high bump of Street's spine where it emerged from his T-shirt, buttons and secret codes, his face caving in around his cheekbones. “What could I have said? What. What would make it okay?”

Street shook his head, near tears again and Harden couldn’t stand him like this. “Nothing. I just. I was expecting something different.”

“I could be that, then,” Harden offered, dreaming briefly of the life Street would imagine, the white beachfront house and the sheets on their bed patterned with baseballs and footballs and basketballs, eggs in the morning and coffee at noon, lying on the beach in the sunlight as broad as shoulders with their skin sandy and slicked by suntan lotion, Ed padding awkwardly across their stomachs.

Street laughed, sounding hurt. “You can’t, because it was. It was stupid. Messed me up, I didn’t even know I wanted you and then you were the only thing and I, I know what this is. It had to be like this, I’m seventeen years old and I’ve never been in love before.”

Blinking mutely, Harden was shot down out of the sky. His hand tightened on Street’s backpack, and his jaw ached because he’d been clenching his teeth. They were in the shade and Harden’s peripheral vision was chromed, searing.

“Just because it was your first time, doesn’t mean it has to end badly,” Harden said haltingly.

“Yeah.” Street looked at him, the prettiest boy in the whole wide world, and touched Harden’s stomach. “It’s kinda too late for that, though. And, see, I just need to recover. You can’t come around anymore. Because I’ll never get better if you’re here.”

And Harden wanted to tell him about addiction, how it splintered every bone and stayed on the edges of everything, the smell of car exhaust and the chafe of rope, the lighter’s wheel hot enough to weld, the brown-black patch on his thumb, something thick in the back of his throat and the totally groundless belief that every day would be better than the one that came before. And he couldn’t be cured, there was no such thing as recovered. Just deprivation in the name of some unspecified good, and his hands itching in the night, his heart bled of color, his mind moving as slowly as tar.

But Street wouldn’t understand. It didn’t work like that. Street reached back and took Harden’s wrist, gently twisted until Harden let him go. Street’s thumb for a moment pattered like Morse code on the narrow veins, and then he was whispering, “please get some sleep, Richie,” and then he was walking away without looking back.

Harden stood in the shade, perfectly still. Someone was burning leaves nearby, black smoke in the sky. Harden’s hand clutched for his pocket and the dim remainder in the little plastic baggie. He breathed out.

A quick session in one of the school’s bathrooms, so reminiscent it almost blew the holocaust out of Harden’s mind, and then he went and bought two more grams. He hoped that Zito would get evicted or mugged, maybe, beaten until he looked like Huston Street and felt as bad as Harden.

High again, high still, panting, Harden waited until nightfall before finding a brick and smashing a car’s window. He took a road map of California and anything he could sell, went back to their apartment and lurked in the hallway for awhile before deciding that Zito wasn’t home.

He stuck the map to the wall with pieces of gum and spun around with his eyes closed, two times, three, four. His heart was beating like a kettle drum, and he jabbed his finger at the map without looking, landed in the ocean twice before hitting land.

He whispered to himself, “Oakland,” and stole Zito’s jacket, because it was probably going to be cold up north.

*

Zito spent six days in jail.

Mulder was broke and wouldn’t have posted his bail anyway, a tacit understanding that anyone dumb enough to get arrested was obligated to find their own way out of it. Another of his boys came in on Zito’s third night and told him that the streets were going to hell on the outside.

Mulder had been spotted driving around in circles, heading for the desert at night, but he wasn’t arranging appointments for any of them and his regulars were turning to his competitors, his boys falling on the city, reckless and without direction. Zito had been the first to be arrested, far from the last.

He kept hoping that Harden would be hauled in, arms chained behind him and a welt like warpaint on his cheek, but Harden had always been good at shimmying out of trouble. Anyway, he had money to last him, a couple of weeks at least.

Zito couldn’t think of anyone else to call, save Eric Chavez, but that wouldn’t fly, because Zito had spent a period of years drunk-dialing Chavez in pitiful black-outs, enough to hear his voice sleep-rough and mumbling before hanging up, and at some point Chavez had gotten a new number.

They’d looked their names up in the phone book when they were in high school, and there were twenty-three Eric Chavezs living in the greater metropolitan area.

Zito wouldn’t have called him even if he’d been able to. There were two reasons he hadn’t gone back with Chavez, that fucking depthless morning a month ago, one was Rich Harden and the other was the thing that had put him in jail.

Zito spent a few days wild with rage, the unfairness of it all, because if a cop was going to bust him, he wasn’t allowed to let Zito blow him first. That was against all kinds of rules, but when he’d screamed it at Tim from the back of his unmarked car, slamming his handcuffed hands on the seat, Tim had torn off that same asshole smirk in the rearview mirror, told him plainly, “It never happened, kid, you offered and I gave you money and then I showed you my badge. You remembering it differently? Ain’t that a fucking shame.”

There wasn’t anything he could do, and Tim had stood across the squad room watching him get booked, sliding his wedding ring back on.

Now Zito was in jail and there wasn’t much to do in jail but think of all the many and varied ways that he’d fucked up his life.

Standing in line for food and pacing the red brick of the yard, not meeting anyone’s eyes, Zito was aware of Harden getting farther and farther away with each day that passed. Just the same as when he’d left San Diego, catching a ride from a guy in a pick-up truck and watching the green highway signs rise and fall, feeling himself part from Chavez so tangibly it made the hair on his arms stand up.

On the sixth day, finally, he got a hold of Danny Haren, at last returned from Hawaii. Haren appeared within the hour, wall-eyed and too excited, paying cash for Zito’s bail and closing his hand in the back of Zito’s shirt as they walked out.

“Dude,” Haren kept saying. “Dude, you got _arrested_. Dude.”

Annoyed but unable to voice it, Zito kissed the side of Haren’s face hard, curling his fingers in Haren’s hair. “Hazard of the job. Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Haren grinned at him, a flush high on his cheeks. “I’ve never known anybody who got arrested before.”

Zito restrained himself from rolling his eyes. “Keep fucking around with guys like me and that won’t last.”

Haren beeped his car unlocked, the headlights blinkering yellow. “No other guys like you, man, seriously.”

Zito gave him a suspicious look and climbed in the passenger seat. The last thing he fucking needed right now was Danny Haren thinking they were something more than a business arrangement.

They left with the engine pealing, powerful rich-boy car, and Zito made sure they weren’t being tailed before getting Haren to pull into an alley and proving his gratitude, wasting no time, bringing Harden almost to violence with every filthy trick he’d ever learned.

Haren slumped uncomfortably in the seat, breathing hard with his leg pulled up and resting on the steering wheel. He petted Zito’s hair as Zito caught his breath, his face on Haren’s thigh.

“Listen,” Zito told him, sitting up straight. “I might be going away for a little while.” Tracking down Harden would likely be a full-time job.

Haren squinted and licked his lips. “Going where?” he asked, rag-dolled with his hand still wrapped around Zito’s arm.

“There’s some stuff. There’s all this stuff that’s happened, and I need. I gotta fix everything.”

Haren rubbed his eyes, nodding along as if he understood. “Do you need some money?”

Zito looked at him, surprised. “You just got me out of jail. I mean. You don’t have to.”

Shrugging, Haren levered up to get his wallet. “Whatever. It’s not my money. It’s not gonna get spent on anything better than your, like, save-the-world trip or whatever.”

He took everything out of his wallet and gave it to Zito without a second thought. Zito took it, almost on autopilot, kept waiting for the catch. Haren just smiled at him, and Zito leaned over, kissed him with his hands on Haren’s face, the money fluttering on his cheek.

He had Haren drop him off at Nicky’s, Haren waving good-bye out the window. The usual crowd was there, dark-eyed and neatly dressed in black leather, and some people nodded to see Zito again, but most didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d been gone.

Zito asked around, but no one had seen Harden. There were rumors, he’d been arrested like the others, he’d gone to Mexico to buy enough speed to get to the moon, he’d been killed. Zito didn’t know what to believe. Six days was too much of a head start to give Harden.

He had some drinks and the night wasted away. Nicky’s never closed, and it was four or five in the morning when Zito fell out of the bar, his mind swirling like a helix. He needed to get some sleep, wash the dirt of prison off his body, and figure out where to start looking.

Mulder was in the parking lot, sitting on the asphalt with his back against the tire of his car. He had a bottle in a brown paper bag next to him and looked like he’d spent the past week being dragged behind a truck.

Zito stood over him, tottering, his hands in his pockets. “Hi.”

Mulder blinked up at him, his upper lip curling. “Well, fuck.”

“What’s. What’re you doing out here?” Zito asked, the words ragged.

Mulder waved indistinctly. “What? I don’t have to be inside. Fuckin’, so fucking tired of it.”

Reaching for Mulder’s bottle, Zito almost overbalanced, catching himself on the side of Mulder’s car and dropping to his knees. He rested his head on the smooth cool metal, his arm against Mulder’s shoulder.

“Couldn’t find your boy?” Zito mumbled with his eyes closed, felt Mulder shrug.

“Hate him, you know?” Mulder slurred, talking to the sky.

Zito murmured in agreement, knives in his bloodstream, thinking horrifically of the last thing Harden had said to him. Mulder laughed disjointedly, blankly staring up at the vanishing stars.

“Thought maybe it was gonna be okay,” Mulder continued, bumping his head into Zito’s arm.

Zito didn’t say anything for awhile, then asked, “Did you know that Richie’s first name is James?”

Mulder’s hand scrambled on the asphalt, and he said something unintelligible. Zito thought that it probably wasn’t that important, anyway, and shifted on his sore knees, sitting next to Mulder and leaning against him. Mulder’s head was tipped back, his throat as straight as an arrow.

“Did you know that Bobby used to fix bikes?” Mulder said eventually, and Zito felt a wicked cawing laugh fill his mouth and disintegrate like sugar. He hid his face in his knees and kept thinking, someday it wouldn’t matter, someday it’d be years ago.

“Hey,” Mulder said, his fingers crawling up Zito’s leg. “Fuck ‘em.”

Zito wiped his tearing eyes with the side of his hand and nodded, unable to breathe. “Yeah.”

The sun was rising, slow and colored like flowers, wholly broken on the streets of the city and the two of them side-by-side, the streetlights turning off one at a time.

THE END


End file.
